Refugees and Displaced Persons

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      ‘They Are Erasing Streets’: Russian Attacks Bring War Nearer Kharkiv

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      Russia’s latest offensive has expanded the battlefield along Ukraine’s northern border, and sent thousands of civilians fleeing to the closest large city.After all-night air raid alarms, a weary Kharkiv woke up Saturday morning to a heavy gray sky and the disconcerting news that the Russian Army continued to press its advance on nearby Ukrainian territory.All night, dull explosions from battlefields 40 miles away echoed across Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city. On Saturday morning, a day after Russian forces seized several villages along the border and Ukraine rushed reinforcements to the area, the ghostly wail of air raid sirens continued to drift over the city’s deserted parks and long, empty boulevards.Thousands of people are fleeing the border areas and arriving at shelters in Kharkiv.Tetiana Novikova is one of them.Until Friday, she had spent her entire 55 years in Vovchansk, a small town near the Russian border. She was born there, married there, worked in a factory there and raised two children there.But the shelling became so terrifying that she and her family made the painful decision to abandon the home they had lived in for decades. On Friday evening, she arrived with her elderly parents, shaken, hungry and a bit lost, at a Kharkiv school that has been turned into a displaced persons’ reception center.The only people left in Vovchansk, Ms. Novikova said, “are the old and the disabled, and they can’t move.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      On the Met Roof, Skywriting His Way to Freedom

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      Petrit Halilaj of Kosovo began drawing as a refugee child in the Balkans during a violent decade and invented a calligraphic world of memory.When this old world starts getting me downAnd people are just too much for me to faceI climb way up to the top of the stairsAnd all my cares just drift right into space …I’ve found a paradise that’s trouble-proof …Up on the roofSo crooned the Drifters in 1962, making the inner-city rooftop — “tar beach” — a very cool spring-and-summertime place to be. And while the roof of the august Metropolitan Museum of Art may not have figured in anyone’s getaway plan back then, it does now, thanks to the Roof Garden sculptural commissions the museum has been installing, seasonally, over the past dozen years.The latest of them, “Petrit Halilaj, Abetare,” which opens on Tuesday, is one of the airiest looking so far. Indeed, drawing — or skywriting — rather than sculpture is what I’d call this openwork tangle of dark bronze-and-steel calligraphic lines tracing silhouetted images — of birds, flowers, stars, a giant spider and a fairy tale house — against the panorama of Manhattan beyond and Central Park below.It’s a funky, sky-reaching fantasia. But Paradise? Uh-uh. The spider looks mean. The house tilts as if melting. And what’s with a scattering of spiky phalluses, and a Soviet hammer-and-sickle emblem, and mysterious words and anagrams — Runik, Kukes, KFOR — with explicitly down-to-earth connections?And what to make of the fact that all of these images and words were lifted from a single prosaic source. They were found, scratched and doodled on the surfaces of classroom desktops by generations of elementary school kids in the Balkan territories of Europe during a time of brutalizing regional war.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Heat Wave in Gaza Challenges Pharmacists Ability to Store Medicine

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      A heat wave in the Gaza Strip this week, with temperatures soaring above 100 degrees Fahrenheit the past few days, has not only made life intolerable for the hundreds of thousands of displaced people trying to rebuild their lives in tent cities but has made it hard for some businesses to operate.By Saturday, the heat had significantly eased and the forecast was for more moderate temperatures in coming days. But the recent highs offered a vision of what the summer likely holds.“This hot weather is a challenge for us,” said Mohammed Fayyad, a displaced pharmacist who started selling medications from a tent he built out of wooden slabs, curtains and metal scraps at a camp for displaced people in Al-Mawasi.With no electricity or alternative sources of power, Mr. Fayyad, 32, said that he could not keep the medicines — which he buys from pharmacies that have had to shut down — stored at cool enough temperatures to keep them from being damaged.“Fifty percent of the medicines for chronic diseases are not available because we do not have any source of power to keep them cool,” said Mr. Fayyad, speaking from his makeshift pharmacy that he named after his 3-year-old daughter Julia.Mr. Fayyad is trying to find ways to generate power for a refrigerator to store medication.“I hope I can find those solar panels, which are very expensive, to make the options wider for the displaced people,” he said.Mr. Fayyad was displaced with his wife and only daughter from Khan Younis, where they lived and owned a pharmacy. They have been in Al-Mawasi for more than two months. When they recently went back to Khan Younis after the Israeli military withdrew from the area, he found his pharmacy had been burned and looted.Nearly two million Palestinians in Gaza were forced to flee their homes under Israeli bombardment and military evacuation orders. Many had to live in tents that provided little protection from the cold and rainy months earlier in the war and that offer them no protection against the scalding heat and humid weather now.Parents across the Gaza Strip are relying on water to keep their children cool when it is already not easy to get. The hot weather is also bringing insects that help spread disease.“My children were stung by insects and mosquitoes because there is no sanitation around, and sewage is leaking almost everywhere,” said Mohammed Abu Hatab, a father of four, including a 7-month-old. His family has been spending their days outside, under the shade of nylon tents, which trap heat and make the tents more unbearable.“I had to undress my children to their underwear only,” said Mr. Abu Hatab, 33. He added: “The tent, the heat wave, and the horror of this war are all a nightmare. How can my children live healthily and safely?” More

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      Tensions Flare in West Bank After Israeli Teenager Is Found Dead

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      The killing, which Israel called a “terrorist attack,” prompted rioting by Israeli settlers that killed one Palestinian and raised fears of a broader escalation.The disappearance and death of an Israeli teenager, whose body was found on Saturday in the West Bank, spurred deadly rioting by Israeli settlers in Palestinian villages, ratcheting up tensions even further in the occupied territory.Settlers unleashed a wave of mob violence in a Palestinian village near Ramallah on Friday and carried out mob assaults in at least two villages on Saturday, after the Israeli authorities announced that the teenager, Binyamin Achimair, had been found dead.The Israeli police said Binyamin, 14, had left a farming settlement in the West Bank to herd sheep on Friday morning but never returned. Israeli forces found his body on Saturday near the settlement, Malachei HaShalom, in the central West Bank.The second day of unrest erupted in the village near Ramallah, Al Mughayir, and another Palestinian village, Duma, an Israeli security official said. Israeli settlers, some of them armed, entered the villages, the official added. There were reports that the settlers had opened fire.The Israeli military said in a statement that dozens of Palestinians and Israelis were wounded during clashes at several locations across the West Bank on Saturday. It described them as “confrontations between Israeli civilians and Palestinians” in which “rocks were hurled and shots were fired.” The statement said the military and police worked to disperse the crowds.In Duma, the attackers “covered the entire village,” some of them armed, said Naser Dawabsheh, a resident. They set several buildings and cars ablaze, sending a cloud of dense smoke over the village, he said. Rather than dispersing the Israeli rioters, the Israeli military protected them, he added.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      NYC and DocGo to Part Ways After Migrant Service Operator’s Contract Ends

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      DocGo, which has a $432 million contract with the city, faced allegations of providing migrants with false papers, wasting food and hiring unlicensed security guards.New York City will soon part ways with DocGo, which has provided services to migrants under a lucrative $432 million contract, city officials said Tuesday.Last spring, the company, a medical services provider that had multimillion-dollar contracts to provide Covid tests and vaccinations, landed a no-bid contract to house and care for migrants in the city and upstate despite having no broad experience dealing with asylum seekers.But the company quickly faced allegations that its employees or subcontractors had mistreated and lied to migrants, provided them with fake work papers, wasted staggering amounts of food and hired unlicensed security guards. In the wake of reporting by The New York Times and other news outlets, Attorney General Letitia James started an investigation into DocGo over possible violations of state or federal laws regarding the treatment of people in its care.In a written statement Tuesday, as first reported by Politico, Mayor Eric Adams’s chief of staff, Camille Joseph Varlack, said the city would not renew DocGo’s contract to house and care for migrants in New York City hotels when it expires in early May, one year after it took effect. A Texas-based company, Garner Environmental Services, will take over those services temporarily — at a cost of $10 less per person, per night than DocGo receives, officials said.“This will ultimately allow the city to save more money and will allow others, including nonprofits and internationally recognized resettlement providers, to apply to do this critical work, and ensures we are continuing to use city funds as efficiently and effectively as possible,” Ms. Varlack said.The city will begin a competitive bidding process to find a new provider to take over the work.But Ms. Varlack said the city was working on a temporary contract extension for DocGo’s services upstate in order to minimize disruptions to the 1,800 or so migrants, including school-age children, who are in DocGo’s care at cut-rate motels from Westchester County to Buffalo. City Hall says the extension will last until a new provider is selected in the competitive bidding process.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The U.S. Is Rebuilding a Legal Pathway for Refugees. The Election Could Change That.

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      President Biden is restoring resources and staffing for the refugee program, which was gutted during the Trump administration.With national attention focused on the chaos at the southern border, President Biden has been steadily rebuilding a legal pathway for immigration that was gutted during the Trump administration.The United States has allowed more than 40,000 refugees into the country in the first five months of the fiscal year after they passed a rigorous, often yearslong, screening process that includes security and medical vetting and interviews with American officers overseas.The figure represents a significant expansion of the refugee program, which is at the heart of U.S. laws that provide desperate people from around the world with a legal way to find safe haven in the United States.The United States has not granted refugee status to so many people in such a short period of time in more than seven years. The Biden administration is now on target to allow in 125,000 refugees this year, the most in three decades, said Angelo Fernández Hernández, a White House spokesman.By comparison, roughly 64,000 refugees were admitted during the last three years of the Trump administration.“The Biden administration has been talking a big talk about resettling more refugees since Biden took office,” said Julia Gelatt, an associate director at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington. “Finally we are seeing the payoff in higher numbers.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Palestinian Christians Mark Easter in Gaza’s Only Catholic Church

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      The only Catholic church in the Gaza Strip held somber Easter celebrations on Sunday for hundreds of displaced Palestinian Christians who have been sheltering within its compound since the war began nearly six months ago.The Holy Family Church is in Gaza City, in the northern part of the strip, an area that has suffered some of the heaviest Israeli bombardment since October and where the global authority on food security says a full-scale famine is imminent.Children ride their bikes past the Holy Family church compound on Sunday. Church officials said Israeli rockets hit a convent on the compound in December and rendered it uninhabitable.Mohamed Hajjar/EPA, via ShutterstockThe families who have taken refuge at the church have been “scraping to get by” for months with limited food and “almost nonexistent” medical supplies — the same as all Palestinians in northern Gaza, including Muslims celebrating the holy month of Ramadan, said Father Davide Meli, the chancellor of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. “It’s a high holiday for all of us,” he said.The priest of the Holy Family parish, Father Gabriel Romanelli, was in Bethlehem when the war began on Oct. 7, and Israeli authorities have repeatedly denied him permission to return to Gaza, according to Father Meli.The Holy Family Church is the only Catholic church in the Gaza Strip.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA nun prays during Easter Mass at the Holy Family Church.Dawoud Abu Alkas/ReutersMore than 500 people are sheltering at the Holy Family Church and approximately 300 others are at the historic Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church nearby, Father Meli said. Together, he added, they make up the vast majority of Gaza’s tiny and tight-knit Christian population.Both churches have been attacked during the war. An Israeli airstrike killed 18 people at the Saint Porphyrius church in October, according to the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which condemned the attack as a war crime. The Israeli military later said it was targeting a nearby building.Hundreds of displaced Palestinians have sought shelter at the church in northern Gaza.Mohamed Hajjar/EPA, via ShutterstockAt the Holy Family Church in December, Israeli snipers killed a mother and daughter inside the church compound and injured seven others who rushed to help them, according to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Church officials said Israeli rockets also hit a convent within the compound earlier that day, destroying the building’s sole generator and leaving some of the dozens of disabled people living there without working respirators that they needed to survive.The Israeli military denied knowledge of the incident, which Pope Francis condemned as an attack on a church “where there are no terrorists, but families, children, people who are sick and have disabilities, sisters.” He called for an immediate cease-fire in his Easter address on Sunday. More

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      Israel and Hezbollah Trade Fire, With Deaths Reported on Both Sides

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      The exchange came as a U.N. cease-fire demand appeared to be having little effect on the war in Gaza, and pressure increased on neighboring Jordan to sever ties with Israel.Hezbollah militants fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel from Lebanon on Wednesday, in what they said was retaliation for an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon overnight.The militants’ barrage came as pro-Palestinian protesters turned up the pressure on the government in neighboring Jordan to sever ties with Israel. It also came as the United States said a previously canceled meeting with an Israeli delegation in Washington to discuss a planned offensive into the southern Gazan city of Rafah would be rescheduled.For months, Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed group based in Lebanon, has traded fire with Israeli forces across the border, and on Wednesday, the Israeli military said its forces had targeted a “significant terrorist operative” near the town of al-Habbariyeh in southern Lebanon.Lebanon’s Ministry of Health, which said the Israeli strike had hit an emergency medical center and killed seven paramedics, denounced it as “unacceptable.”Hezbollah’s response was swift: An Israeli government spokesman said 30 rockets were launched into Israel. The strikes included a direct hit on a building in the city of Kiryat Shmona that killed a 25-year-old person, according to the Israeli authorities.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More