Scorch marks and bullet holes scar the battered walls of the Haran family home in kibbutz Be’eri. Its tiled roof has caved in, windows smashed, littering the floors with sharp shards of terracotta and glass – the debris, still untouched, of a day of horror for Israel.

“This house tells the story of Be’eri,” says Yarden Tzemach, a farmer and surviving resident of the kibbutz, one of the Israeli communities near Gaza that was overrun by Hamas militants last year.

“In this house, people were murdered. A family, including three children, were kidnapped from here,” he says.

Outside, beneath the fruit trees in the back yard, a toddler’s ride-on toy car, adorned with stickers of Winnie the Pooh, sits amid the rubble, a stark reminder of the lives shattered here.

In some neighborhoods of Be’eri, barely a building was left intact. More than 100 of its 1,100 residents were killed and another 30 abducted to Gaza on October 7.

Home after home was burned out or reduced to rubble and – a year on – many remain as poignant monuments to an ongoing trauma. At least 10 residents of the kibbutz, all friends and neighbors of each other, are among the more than 100 Israelis believed to still be held hostage.

Progress on a ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas has repeatedly fallen apart to the anger and despair of hostage families.

‘Best recovery is coming home

In the main administration building of Be’eri, two large aerial photographs hang side by side near the entrance. One is an image of the kibbutz from April 2023, showing ordered rows of neat, white buildings set in lush gardens. The other, taken just after the October 7 attack, shows the same homes blackened and destroyed in the militants’ rampage.

“They killed my sister over there,” says Amit Solvy, pointing to a house on the map, five rows in from the fence that runs around the kibbutz.

Elsewhere in the administration building, two posters are taped in a window – one showing the names and faces of the kibbutz residents who were killed, and another listing those who are held hostage.

Solvy, the Be’eri finance chairman, himself an Israeli veteran of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, is one of nearly 100 residents to have so far returned. Despite his personal loss, he came back to his house three months ago and is now helping lead efforts to bring kibbutz Be’eri, formerly a self-sustaining farming community, back to life.

“I said to all the people that the best recovery is coming home. This is the best emotional recovery, in my opinion,” says Solvy.

But he acknowledges not everyone feels the same, estimating that up to 15% of the surviving residents of Be’eri may never return because of the trauma and the memories of October 7.

And many of those who want to come back, he says, are unable to do so until the extensive damage has been repaired and homes rebuilt – a massive renovation project that means it will be at least 2 years, according to Solvy, before the majority of residents can return home.

“There is no infrastructure for kids, there are no schools, so people with families cannot come back yet,” he explains.

‘There were terrorists in my house’

Work on the physical scars has already begun, with heavy machinery breaking ground on a new neighborhood of Be’eri. New homes, untouched by the October 7 attack, are seen as an essential means of attracting the majority of the residents back.

Ayelet Hakim, her husband and their son, 12, and daughter, 5, live alongside many other Be’eri survivors in government-supplied temporary housing in another kibbutz, Hatzerim, an hour’s drive from the horrifying memories of what was their home.

“I sat in my safe room there for hours and hours not knowing what was going on, and feeling my life being threatened, my kid’s life being threatened, because there were terrorists in my house,” she adds.

Her son, Yehonatan, interrupts. “I want to go back to Be’eri, back to the house that I was living in. I don’t care about the trauma,” he pleads.

“The house, no. The kibbutz, yes,” asserts Ayelet.

“Kibbutz Be’eri has been my home for the past 56 years. That’s where I want to live,” she says.

But after so much death and destruction in Be’eri, a community so close to Gaza, much must also be done to reassure residents they’ll be safe.

In July, an Israel Defense Forces internal investigation into the events of October 7 concluded that the Israeli military had “failed in its mission to protect the residents” and was ill-prepared for the mass Hamas attack.

“I believe it will be possible. But it will be a big challenge and will take a long time for people to feel as safe as they felt before October 7,” says Tzemach, back at the ruins of his Be’eri neighborhood.

“You know, once something happens, you always have in the back of your mind that it can happen again.”

More than a dozen tigers were incinerated after the animals contracted bird flu at a zoo in southern Vietnam, officials said.

State media VNExpress cited a caretaker at Vuon Xoai zoo in Bien Hoa city saying the animals were fed with raw chicken bought from nearby farms. The panther and 20 tigers, including several cubs, weighed between 10 and 120 kilograms (20 and 265 pounds) when they died. The bodies were incinerated and buried on the premises.

“The tigers died so fast. They looked weak, refused to eat and died after two days of falling sick,” said zoo manager Nguyen Ba Phuc.

Samples taken from the tigers tested positive for H5N1, the virus that causes bird flu.

The virus was first identified in 1959 and grew into a widespread and highly lethal menace to migratory birds and domesticated poultry. It has since evolved, and in recent years H5N1 was detected in a growing number of animals ranging from dogs and cats to sea lions and polar bears.

In cats, scientists have found the virus attacking the brain, damaging and clotting blood vessels and causing seizures and death.

More than 20 other tigers were isolated for monitoring. The zoo houses some 3,000 other animals including lions, bears, rhinos, hippos and giraffes.

The 30 staff members who were taking care of the tigers tested negative for bird flu and were in normal health condition, VNExpress reported. Another outbreak also occurred at a zoo in nearby Long An province, where 27 tigers and 3 lions died within a week in September, the newspaper said.

Unusual flu strains that come from animals are occasionally found in people. Health officials in the United States said Thursday that two dairy workers in California were infected — making 16 total cases detected in the country in 2024.

“The deaths of 47 tigers, three lions, and a panther at My Quynh Safari and Vuon Xoai Zoo amid Vietnam’s bird flu outbreak are tragic and highlight the risks of keeping wild animals in captivity,” PETA Senior Vice President Jason Baker said in a statement sent to The Associated Press.

“The exploitation of wild animals also puts global human health at risk by increasing the likelihood of another pandemic,” Baker said.

Bird flu has caused hundreds of deaths around the world, the vast majority of them involving direct contact between people and infected birds.

A 21-year-old Yazidi woman has been rescued from Gaza where she had been held captive by Hamas for years after being trafficked by ISIS.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Thursday that Fawzia Amin Sido was freed this week in an operation coordinated between Israel, the United States and other international actors.

She said that she was initially kidnapped by ISIS as a child in August 2014 when the group captured the city of Sinjar in the Nineveh Governorate of northern Iraq, executing Yazidi men and boys and committing acts of sexual violence and rape against women and girls, among other crimes.

Over the next few years, Fawzia was trafficked to different locations across several countries.

“We ended up in Al-Hol camp (in Syria) before we were smuggled to Idlib in 2019, and from there, we went to Turkey. In 2020, they arranged a passport for me in Turkey so I could fly from Istanbul to Hurghada, Egypt, and then to Gaza,” she said.

“Hamas constantly harassed me due to my Yazidi background and contact with my family, even going so far as to format my phone [erase its contents] during their investigations. After a year, they moved me to a guest house.”

When the Israel-Hamas war broke out in 2023, she was again moved around frequently – until October 1, when she said an NGO rescued her.

The IDF said that her captor was killed, “presumably during IDF strikes” in Gaza, allowing her to flee to a hideout, from where she was rescued and taken to the Kerem Shalom border crossing.

“From there, American officials took me and helped return me to Baghdad,” she said.

Israel released a video showing her reuniting with her family members, who were overcome with emotion as they embraced her.

Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said she was freed after over four months of efforts from Iraqi government agencies working with American and Jordanian authorities.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller confirmed that the US helped evacuate Fawzia from Gaza. He echoed Israel’s account, saying that “the recent death of her captor in Gaza allowed her to escape.”

“We were contacted by the Iraqi government, who was made aware of the fact that she escaped, that she was alive, and that she wanted to come home to her family. And the government of Iraq asked us to do whatever we could to get her out of Gaza and get her home. So over the past few weeks, we worked with a number of our partners in the region to get her out of Gaza,” Miller said at a press briefing on Thursday.

The fate of a possible successor to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is unclear following an Israeli airstrike on Beirut.

Safieddine is a maternal cousin of Nasrallah – the two studied in Iran together in the early 1980s. Just like Nasrallah, Safieddine is a staunch critic of Israel and the West, with deep alliances with the Iranian leadership.

Safieddine served as head of Hezbollah’s executive council and, until his predecessor’s death, was seen as one of the most likely heirs to the organization’s highest-ranking seat. The group has yet to name a successor to Nasrallah.

The executive council is one of five bodies that make up the Shura Council, which is the organization’s decision-making body. The executive council oversees political matters, as opposed to the Jihad Council which is the group’s military body, which Safieddine is a member of.

Safieddine has previously spoken of the “strong relationship” between Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and especially Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in US airstrike at Baghdad airport in 2020. Safieddine’s son is married to Soleimani’s daughter.

The Shiite cleric was born in 1964 in the southern Lebanese village of Deir Qanoun En Nahr. Like the late Hezbollah leader, he wears the black turban signaling that he is a “Sayyid,” a Shiite honorific title denoting descent from Prophet Mohammed.

The 60-year-old cleric has had a visible presence across Hezbollah’s political stage, especially over the past year. Throughout the Gaza war, Safieddine would make statements denouncing Israel’s actions in the enclave and on his country’s southern border.

Nasrallah “started tailoring positions for him within a variety of different councils within Lebanese Hezbollah. Some of them were more opaque than others. They’ve had him come, go out and speak,” Phillip Smyth, an expert who studies Iran-backed Shiite militias, told Reuters.

Speaking at the funeral ceremony of one of the slain Hezbollah members in May, Safieddine boasted that his group is nonetheless strong and resilient, prioritizing – along with their Iranian allies – the Palestinian cause and the need to liberate the Palestinian people.

Following the back-to-back explosions that targeted Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies, Safieddine said that his organization “will not back down until the end.”

Saffiedine has long been a hawkish critic of US policy, which he sees as aiding and abetting Israel’s actions in Gaza and southern Lebanon.

In 2021, he accused Washington of “interfering” in Lebanese domestic politics, saying that “American tyranny” is “sabotaging” the region’s nations, citing Iraq and Afghanistan among examples.

The United States designated Hezbollah a foreign terrorist organization in 1997, and in 2017 designated Safieddine a foreign terrorist.

Yair Pinhas grew up hiking in the hills around Kiryat Shmona, his hometown in northern Israel, near the border with Lebanon.

“We always thought that the October 7 (attack) would happen here, we always talked about it,” he said, rolling a cigarette outside a hotel on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, about 40 miles from Kiryat Shmona.

Pinhas’ parents and his elderly grandmother have been living in this hotel for almost a year, ever since they were evacuated from Kiryat Shmona following the October 7 terror attacks. Pinhas spent months couch-surfing with friends in Tel Aviv before renting an apartment there; he comes regularly to see his family.

Kiryat Shmona, which sits in a pocket of Israeli land surrounded by Lebanon, just a couple of miles to the south and east from the border, sits on the opposite side of Israel to where the Hamas-led attacks took place last year. But its proximity to Lebanon makes it vulnerable to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group that has been attacking Israel on a regular basis over the past year, in support of Hamas.

Israel has responded with cross-border attacks and the two sides have been engaged in a tit-for-tat escalation since October 8. Hezbollah has said it will not stop striking Israel until a ceasefire is reached in Gaza.

The city was hit multiple times in recent months, most recently by a barrage of rockets that caused heavy damage and several fires on Friday morning, according to Israeli police.

“When I was growing up, it wasn’t just sirens like now… it was someone blaring from a car, ‘everybody get to shelters! Everybody get to shelters!’ And in school, when the alarm went off, nobody was freaking out because we were used to it,” he said.

“Everybody goes into the shelter, you hear the bombs and then wait for somebody to tell you it’s safe to leave,” he explained, adding that while the locals have gotten used to attacks from the skies, there has always been the worry that Hezbollah could try to storm them from the ground.

“There was a warning some months before October 7, saying you need to know that the next war won’t be just rockets. They will come here. There are a lot of tunnels, and we need to prepare ourselves… and we didn’t. People are stupid. Until something happens, you don’t really act,” he said.

But then came the shock of the terror attacks, when Hamas and other militant groups killed more than 1,200 people in southern Israel and kidnapped some 250 more into Gaza.

“Everything has changed then,” Pinhas said. “We thought our army was strong and prepared and suddenly you see this, shooting everywhere. I had three friends who were at the Nova festival, one of them died, two were saved,” he said.

‘There will be a lot of deaths’

The Israeli government said the fate of people like Pinhas is among the reasons why it needs to act forcefully against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly meeting last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hezbollah had fired more than 8,000 rockets at Israel since October 8, forcing some 60,000 people to flee their homes along the border.

“Israel has been tolerating this intolerable situation for nearly a year. Well, I’ve come here today to say enough is enough. We won’t rest until our citizens can return safely to their homes,” he said.

Shortly after Netanyahu spoke at the UN, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a deadly strike on the Lebanese capital Beirut, targeting and killing Hezbollah’s long term leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Three days later, the IDF said it was launching a “limited and localized” ground operation in Lebanon. The IDF’s top spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the move was designed to prevent an October-7 style attack by Hezbollah and “to enable all 60,000 Israelis to safely return back to their homes in northern Israel.”

But at least some of the people whose fates Netanyahu invoked during his speech are questioning the decision.

“I think that it’s very dangerous for the army to go to Lebanon, because there are many, many traps… I think that we can protect the border by plane. Or go (in) and come back… But not stay (in Lebanon), it’s too dangerous,” she said.

Hatan, whose house overlooks the Lebanese border, has lived in Shtula her whole life. She said that she’s worried current warfare is much more deadly than it was in 2006, the last time Israel invaded Lebanon.

Pinhas, too, is conflicted about Israel’s decision to cross the border.

“It’s very hard. On (the) one hand, I can say, yes, you’re right, because we need to go back home and we need to bring peace to our town. So my first thought is we need to do something about it, because their (Hezbollah’s) main purpose is to kill us,” he said.

“But the other thing that I’m feeling, and everybody’s feeling that, is that this is very dangerous, and there will be a lot of deaths. Hezbollah, they know very well their territory there, this is their playground. This is not like in 2006, this is not a small group, we gave them a lot of time to prepare themselves and get a lot of ammunition,” he added, referencing the 2006 Israeli invasion into Lebanon which lasted 34 days and ended in a stalemate after killing some 1,100 people on the Lebanese side and about 170 Israelis.

The Israeli offensive is among the most intense in decades, surpassed only by its bombing of Gaza.

Standing on a hilltop in Kiryat Shmona, the scale of the bombardment becomes apparent as a steady stream of loud bangs reverberates throughout the valley. A loud boom when the artillery round gets fired, followed by a whizz overhead. A while later, a deep thud of the impact somewhere behind the border.

A city of some 22,000, Kiryat Shmona has turned into a ghost town over the past year. Signs of destruction are clearly visible throughout its streets – shrapnel holes in facades, damage caused by falling debris, destruction caused by direct hits by rockets.

On Thursday, marking the Jewish new year, the Pinhas family snuck back into Kiryat Shmona for a brief visit.

“To water the plants and feed the cats. There are many street cats in Kiryat Shmona and they need feeding,” Pinhas said.

Several rockets were fired at the city from Lebanon on Thursday but were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense systems, the bright light of interceptor missiles popping up in the skies and chasing away the threat.

A black and white cat, meanwhile, continued to rummage through the pile of debris lying in front of a family home destroyed in an earlier rocket attack.