Tens of thousands of displaced Gaza residents ended months of exile in temporary camps and began returning to what was left of their homes on Monday after Israel opened a corridor into the north of the battered enclave.

For days, they had sat out in the streets or on a beach with their mattresses, belongings, and water tanks, waiting for the checkpoint to open under the terms of the ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas.

“We miss our home. We have been living in tents for 470 days,” said Fadi Al Sinwar, from Gaza City on Sunday.

“We want to return home … Even though my house is destroyed. I miss my land and my place,” she said.

Their return was pushed back by 48 hours after Israel accused Hamas of breaching the terms of the ceasefire agreement over the release of hostage Arbel Yehud, delaying the opening of the Netzarim corridor that bisects the territory.

Hamas and Israel agreed to release more hostages, including Yehud, on Thursday and Saturday, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said on Sunday.

Under the agreement, Israel would allow Gazans to return to the north from Monday morning, according to the office.

The incident escalated tensions and threatened to derail the already fragile truce.

Those tensions heightened further on Saturday after President Donald Trump said he had discussed his plan to “clean out” Gaza with the king of Jordan and intended to raise the matter with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

The US president said he would like both Jordan and Egypt — which borders Gaza — to house hundreds of thousands of Palestinians either temporarily or “long term,” telling reporters onboard Air Force One, “because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now and it’s a mess, it’s a real mess.”

“It’s literally a demolition site right now,” Trump said of Gaza, much of which lies in ruins from relentless Israeli strikes during its 15-month war with Hamas. “I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change.”

Trump’s Gaza plan strongly condemned

Both Jordan and Egypt rejected Trump’s idea to shift Palestinians out of the enclave, saying such a move would displace Palestinians from their homeland. Trump’s comments were also strongly condemned by Palestinian leaders and human rights groups, who denounced the forced relocation of residents as ethnic cleansing and a possible war crime.

“Our refusal of displacement is a steadfast position that will not change,” Jordan’s minister of foreign affairs said in a statement Sunday. Jordan is committed to “ensuring that Palestinians remain on their land,” Ayman Safadi said, adding: “Jordan is for Jordanians, and Palestine is for Palestinians.”

Jordan is already home to more than 2.39 million registered Palestinian refugees and more than half a million war-displaced Syrians, according to the United Nations.

Egypt has also taken in huge numbers of refugees from Syria, South Sudan, Libya, Iraq and other African nations, and has repeatedly opposed previous attempts to evacuate Gazan residents across its borders.

Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiterated the country’s position against “the displacement of Palestinians from their land through forced eviction” in a statement Sunday.

“Such actions threaten stability, risk extending the conflict further in the region, and undermine opportunities for peace and coexistence,” the statement added.

Trump’s comments appear to break with decades of US foreign policy, which has long emphasized a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.

Specter of further mass displacement

But Trump’s idea to ultimately move residents to another country has only raised fears of further mass displacement among Palestinians.

The Palestinian Presidency said the plan “constitutes a blatant violation of red lines Palestinian leadership have consistently warned about.”

“The Palestinian people will never abandon their lands or their Holy Sites, and will not allow the repetition of the Nakba of 1948 and Naksa 1967,” the presidency said.

The movement of Palestinian refugees out of Gaza would evoke painful memories of the mass displacement that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948. There are some 5.9 million Palestinian refugees worldwide, most of them descendants of the 700,000 people who were expelled or fled their homes during the Nakba, or catastrophe.

Hundreds of thousands more were displaced during the 1967 war, when Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan and Gaza from Egypt.

There are fears that if carried out, Trump’s plan would bring an end to any future prospect of Palestinian-Israeli peace based on a two-state solution.

Hamas in a statement said it will “categorically reject any plans to deport and displace them from their land,” and called on the US administration to “stop these proposals.”

Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad also condemned Trump’s “reprehensible statements” and called the proposal “a continuation of the policy of denying the existence of the Palestinian people, their will and their rights.”

Human rights groups have also denounced the idea.

Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine Director Omar Shakir said in a post on X that it “would amount to an alarming escalation in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and exponentially increase their suffering.”

US-based advocacy group the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), said Trump’s idea was “delusional and dangerous nonsense.”

“The Palestinian people are not willing to abandon Gaza, and neighboring countries are not willing to help Israel ethnically cleanse Gaza,” CAIR said on X.

Trump’s plan was supported by Israeli far-right politicians, however.

Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has argued strenuously for Israel to re-establish Jewish settlements in Gaza abandoned under an Israeli order in 2005, quickly endorsed Trump’s comments.

“For years, politicians have proposed unrealistic solutions like dividing the land and establishing a Palestinian state, which endangered the existence and security of the only Jewish state in the world, and only led to bloodshed and suffering for many people,” he said in a statement released by his spokesperson.

“Only out-of-the-box thinking with new solutions will bring a peace and security solution.”

Chairman of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, Itamar Ben Gvir, congratulated Trump on the proposal.

“I think that when the president of the world’s largest power himself raises this idea, then the Israeli government should implement encouraging immigration, now,” he said. Ben Gvir was Israel’s national security minister before resigning from Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet in protest at the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal.

South Korea’s authorities investigating last month’s Jeju Air plane crash have submitted a preliminary accident report to the UN aviation agency and to the authorities of the United States, France and Thailand, an official said on Monday.

The investigation into the deadliest air disaster on the country’s soil remains ongoing, the report made available on Monday said, focused on the role of “bird strike” and involving an analysis of the engines and the “localizer” landing guidance structure.

“These all-out investigation activities aim to determine the accurate cause of the accident,” it said.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the UN agency, requires accident investigators to produce a preliminary report within 30 days of the accident and encourages a final report to be made public within 12 months.

The Boeing 737-800 jet, from Bangkok and scheduled to arrive at Muan International Airport, overshot the runway as it made an emergency belly landing and crashed into the localizer structure, killing all but two of the 181 people and crew members on board on December 29.

The localizer aids navigation of an aircraft making an approach to the runway, and the structure built of reinforced concrete and earth at Muan airport supporting the system’s antennae was likely a cause of the disaster, experts have said.

The report highlighted much of the initial findings by the South Korean investigators that was shared with the families of the victims on Saturday, including the pilots discussing a flock of birds they spotted on its final approach.

The exact time of a bird strike reported by the pilots remains unconfirmed, the accident report said, but the aircraft “made an emergency declaration for a bird strike during a go-around.”

“Both engines were examined, and feathers and bird blood stains were found on each,” it said.

“After the crash into the embankment, fire and a partial explosion occurred. Both engines were buried in the embankment’s soil mound, and the fore fuselage scattered up to 30-200 meters from the embankment,” it said.

The report does not say what may have led to the two data recorders to stop recording simultaneously just before the pilots declared mayday. The aircraft was at an altitude of 498 ft (152 metres) flying at 161 knots (298 km/h or 185 mph) at the moment the blackboxes stopped recording, it said.

Every morning at 7:30 a.m. sharp, a race begins on the outskirts of Chengdu, a sprawling Chinese metropolis known for its spicy hotpot, old tea houses and the country’s most beloved animal – giant pandas.

From the gates of the famed Chengdu Panda Base, fans run to the leafy “villa” of its celebrity resident: Hua Hua, China’s most popular panda. Among them is A’Qiu, who rents an apartment nearby and shares his bedroom with dozens of stuffed black and white teddy bears.

The 32-year-old bikes to the panda base every morning to see Hua Hua and film the celebrity bear for his 10,000 followers on Douyin, TikTok’s sister app. In the summer, he gets up as early as 3 a.m. to be at the front of the line. “Just seeing her face makes me feel incredibly happy,” he said.

Rare, fluffy and irresistibly cute, pandas are adored across the globe. Yet Hua Hua’s star power is something else entirely. The 4-year-old is so popular that only 30 people are allowed to admire her for a mere three minutes each before being ushered out by security guards. On a busy weekend or holiday, tens of thousands of visitors from across China spend more than two hours in line just to catch a glimpse of her.

In Chengdu, Hua Hua’s face is everywhere – in souvenir shops, cafes, post offices and on billboards. She also enjoys a massive following on Chinese social media, where her videos have racked up billions of views.

Hua Hua’s unprecedented popularity epitomizes a new wave of “pandamonium” that is sweeping across China, following a decades-long government effort to transform the giant panda from a little-known animal into a cultural icon, a national symbol and a potent tool of diplomacy.

But the success of the pandas’ rebranding has created an unexpected challenge for Beijing, as it seeks to balance its use of the animals for much-needed soft power abroad against the demands of an adoring public to protect their “national treasure” at all costs.

While many Chinese are proud to share pandas with the world, some – including a vocal fringe group of online influencers – oppose sending their beloved bears to the United States and other “unfriendly” countries, ostensibly for fear they’ll be mistreated.

The group’s howls of protest could be heard last year outside the Dujiangyan Panda Base, the temporary home of two pandas that were sent to the US in a carefully orchestrated process cloaked in secrecy to avoid unscripted attention.

Some animal rights activists and panda fans have also targeted researchers and scientists involved in China’s panda breeding program, prompting the government to signal it will no longer tolerate any attempt to tarnish the conservation success story of the country’s cuddly soft power asset.

From obscurity to fame

Pandas once roamed a vast swath of China, along with parts of northern Myanmar and Vietnam, but human encroachment and climate change shrank the habitat of the bamboo-munching bears to just six mountain ranges above the Sichuan basin, deep in China’s hinterland.

Hailed in imperial times as the “land of heavenly abundance,” Sichuan is now better known as the “hometown of pandas.” The mountainous province boasts a latticework of panda nature reserves and breeding centers, all built in recent decades as China – and the world – raced to save the multimillion years old “living fossil” from extinction.

The provincial capital, Chengdu, home to 21 million people, sits at the foot of snow-capped mountains with misty old-growth forests where wild pandas still roam.

The city’s panda breeding base is the largest in the country, housing more than 240 bears – or a third of the world’s captive panda population. The sprawling facility draws up to 11 million visitors a year, on par with Shanghai Disneyland.

“It’s a symbol of China. All Chinese people want to see it in person,” said a visitor who traveled 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) to Chengdu and lined up at 6 a.m. to see the pandas. But the giant panda hasn’t always been an emblem of the Chinese nation.

Throughout much of history, these elusive bears left little impression on Chinese literature and art, let alone holding any cultural significance like the dragon, the tiger or the crane.

The obscure panda only emerged as a national icon well after the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, according to E. Elena Songster, a historian and author of “Panda Nation: The Construction and Conservation of China’s Modern Icon.”

Unique, lovable and free of historical baggage, the black and white bear was deemed an ideal symbol for the young communist nation to shape its image and identity.

Even then, it took years for the panda to gain widespread recognition and adoration in an impoverished country.

Liu Xuehua, an ecologist who dedicated her career to preserving panda habitat, never knew about these bears growing up in a small industrial city in southeastern China in the 1960s and 1970s. “The media wasn’t so developed, we spent a lot of time studying at school and there weren’t that many zoos in the provinces,” she recalled.

Nowadays, it’s virtually impossible for a Chinese child to grow up without knowing pandas – the “national treasure” brought back from the brink of extinction.

They are featured in cartoons, textbooks, toy stores, and – with their captive population growing from about 100 to more than 700 in a span of decades – can now be seen in zoos across nearly every province in China.

The wild panda population has also rebounded from a low in the 1980s, reaching an estimated 1,864 by the last official count in 2014. Two years later, the giant panda was downgraded from “endangered” to “vulnerable” on the global red list of threatened species.

Soft power asset

Pandas are not only a success story for China in wildlife conservation – they’re also a major soft power asset.

Soft power is something China has struggled with in recent decades even as it propelled itself to become the world’s second-largest economy. Japanese fashion, films, anime, manga and video games have long captivated fans across the globe. More recently, the “Korean wave” has taken the world by storm, setting off a craze for K-pop, K-drama, K-beauty, K-everything.

For China, an authoritarian state where cultural czars dictate the terms of artistic creations, the most successful tool to win hearts and minds worldwide has been – and remains – its monopoly on pandas.

For more than half a century, Beijing has dispatched these charismatic animals overseas to shore up alliances, mend estranged ties and court new partners.

Pandas have been a cornerstone of US-China engagement ever since a pair arrived in Washington in 1972, following President Richard Nixon’s ice-breaking trip to the communist nation during the Cold War.

But relations between the US and China, the world’s two most powerful nations, have sunk to their lowest ebb in decades, strained by spiraling competition over technology, military, geopolitics and more.

Panda diplomacy has been a small bright spot in an otherwise darkened landscape. Last June, China sent the San Diego Zoo the first pair of pandas to enter America in 21 years. A second pair, Bao Li and Qing Bao, made their public debut last Friday at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo after arriving in Washington in October.

“People want a good news story. They want something that shows we can be successful … in protecting the planet,” said Ellen Stofan, the undersecretary for science and research at the Smithsonian, in October as she watched pandas loll about at Wolong Shenshuping, a mountain-ringed breeding base where Bao Li and Qing Bao were born.

Yet even that rare bright spot in relations couldn’t fully escape the shadow of distrust and animosity between the two countries – sentiments that some fear will only deepen now that President Donald Trump is back in the White House with a cabinet staffed with China hawks.

‘Patriotic’ backlash

As the Chinese public grows fonder – and perhaps more protective – of the pandas, some online influencers have expressed concerns about the bears’ welfare abroad, alleging that American zoos have mistreated China’s “national treasures.”

Such claims have often been fueled by the kind of nationalistic, anti-US sentiment fanned by state media. They have gained traction on the Chinese internet in recent years, especially following controversy over the health of Ya Ya, a panda previously on loan to the Memphis Zoo.

In 2023, Ya Ya’s skinny looks and scraggly fur spurred concerns for her health, especially after her male partner, Le Le, died just months before the pair were scheduled to return to China. Chinese social media was awash with wild allegations that the Memphis Zoo had mistreated its pandas as a deliberate snub to China.

Zoo officials repeatedly dismissed such accusations, attributing Ya Ya’s fur loss to a genetic skin disease – a conclusion shared by Chinese experts dispatched to Memphis to examine the panda.

The backlash didn’t derail the panda loan program, which generates an annual fee of about US$1 million per pair of bears for China, but it seems to have complicated matters for everyone involved.

Transporting pandas across the Pacific Ocean has always been a logistically complex undertaking that requires months of planning. Now, authorities must navigate added layers of political sensitivity and secrecy.

The departure date of Bao Li and Qing Bao was kept strictly under wraps, only revealed to the public by the Chinese government once their chartered plane was in the air.

Once held at panda bases, the invitation-only official send-off ceremonies now take place in hotel conference rooms away from crowds of tourists.

A day before Bao Li and Qing Bao’s send-off, Chinese officials rushed to change the event’s location to a more secluded hotel, likely to prevent a repeat of scenes in June, when a small group of protesters gathered outside the Dujiangyan panda base with banners opposing their transfer.

Local journalists who have reported on pandas for years said the crowds were part of a recent trend of “extreme panda fans” protesting the animals being sent overseas. Some even tried to stop their journey by bombarding panda experts, officials and government agencies with angry phone calls. “They believe they’re being very patriotic,” one of the journalists said.

Scrutiny over breeding techniques

The Chinese public’s growing love affair with the bears has also brought more scrutiny to the treatment of pandas in breeding centers and zoos inside China.

“So many fans are watching the live panda cams. And the Chinese institutions are extremely careful in terms of what kind of content they provide and how they’re being perceived by the public. I think (that’s) becoming more of a norm right now,” said Qiongyu Huang, a wildlife biologist at the Smithsonian who has worked with Chinese partners on pandas.

A major point of contention centers on the artificial breeding of pandas in captivity.

Some panda advocates have criticized the use of electroejaculation, a common technique for collecting sperm from mammals, especially on cattle farms. It involves inserting an electric probe with mild currents into the rectum of a male under anesthesia to stimulate ejaculation — a process that some critics say is cruel and harmful. (The procedure is also used on humans when a patient cannot ejaculate on their own due to a spine injury, nerve problem or other condition.)

To address concerns, the Chengdu breeding base conducted a public experiment allowing panda fans to experience the strength of the electric currents firsthand. Visitors were invited to touch an electric probe set to the same voltage used on pandas, and according to the center’s statement, none reported feeling any noticeable sensations.

But criticism and questions have persisted.

Wang Donghui, a scientist at the Chengdu base, is part of a research team that developed a new technique to freeze panda semen to improve its viability – and increase the success rate of artificial insemination. The breakthrough was widely hailed in state media at the time and earned him the nickname “Doctor Panda.” However, Wang now avoids discussing the topic — or anything related to panda sperm and artificial insemination. “We’ve been attacked,” he explained off camera.

That sense of nervousness is palpable at other panda bases too. Some staff spoke of concerns that panda experts and caretakers have become frequent targets of online bullying and phone harassment; one said, only half-jokingly, that they now work in a “high-risk industry.”

The intensity of online harassment has “made it difficult for some experts to carry out their research work properly,” Hou Rong, a leading researcher and deputy director of the Chengdu base, told the state-run People’s Daily.

China’s captive breeding program had a terrible start, its early years marred by failures at both artificial breeding and keeping cubs alive.

An official at the Chengdu base recalled in an interview with state media that in 1996, whenever scientists tried to collect sperm from pandas, the bears would end up with blood in their stools – a condition that persisted for six months at a time. “The situation at the time was extremely dire, none of the captive male pandas could produce any semen,” the official was quoted as saying.

Panda reproduction in captivity is notoriously difficult. Female pandas are in heat only once a year for about 24 to 72 hours. They’re also very picky about who they choose to mate with. And when they finally give birth, newborn pandas are extremely fragile. In the 1990s, the survival rate of cubs under human care at some breeding centers was only 10%, according to state media.

But these hurdles had been largely overcome by the 2000s with the help of American and European scientists, said Wu Honglin, the deputy director of the Shenshuping base.

“With a deeper understanding and research into pandas, along with breakthroughs in reproductive technology, it’s no longer a challenge,” Wu said. And the large captive population offers females more options. “In recent years, we have relied entirely on natural mating,” he added.

China’s breeding centers now boast cub survival rates well above 90%, and every year, dozens of new cubs are born.

Melissa Songer, a conservation biologist at the Smithsonian, said China learned from past lessons. “It’s not that there’s never been a mistake or that things couldn’t get better, but I think things have gotten so much better so quickly,” she said.

Return to the wild

Proponents of the captive breeding program say it serves as vital insurance against extinction.

The end goal is to return the pandas to the wild, and a sizable captive population is the foundation for that long and challenging effort, said Huang, the ecologist at the Smithsonian.

Deep in the misty mountains above the Shenshuping breeding site lies the Tiantaishan rewilding base, where select panda cubs are prepared for life in the wild.

Here, bamboo trees often have messy, broken branches – an unmistakable sign of feeding for the trained eye.

When the cubs reach 1 year old, they are brought into the base’s wild enclosures with their mothers to learn vital survival skills such as foraging, finding water, and dealing with other wildlife like black bears and wild boars.

If deemed ready, the youngster will be released into the wilderness at around 2 years old to face all its beauty, rawness, and dangers on its own. Many don’t pass the strict qualification process and spend the rest of their lives in captivity.

Unlike pandas born in zoos, these rewilding candidates are born in large, semi-natural enclosures, raised entirely by their mothers, with minimal human contact.

Staff have come up with an intriguing way to shield the bears from people – the panda suit.

Keepers here only ever interact with their animal charges while dressed in full-body panda outfits, carefully scented with panda urine or feces.

“The goal isn’t to trick the cubs into thinking we’re pandas,” explained Zhang Dalei, a keeper with over a decade of experience in the program, “but to ensure they don’t develop a dependency on humans.”

The work is not without its risks and at Tiantaishan, Zhang has witnessed a lesser-known, aggressive side of these cuddly bears.

In 2016, a keeper wearing a panda suit was attacked and mauled by a protective mother bear who mistook him as an intruder on her territory. When Zhang rushed to the scene, he found his colleague’s wrist bones exposed, the costume soaked in blood. Though the keeper survived, the bear’s powerful jaws had shattered multiple bones and tendons in his arms and legs.

Rewilding carries substantial risks for its trainees, too.

China’s first attempt at releasing a panda into the wild in 2006 ended in tragedy when a 5-year-old bear, Xiang Xiang, was found dead in the snow less than a year later. He was believed to have fallen from height during a territorial fight with a wild male panda. The setback prompted the immediate suspension of the program.

Chinese researchers spent four years reflecting, learning, and refining their methods before restarting the training in its current form, where mother and cub learn to survive in the wild together. The next panda was released in 2012, and since then, 10 more have followed. One of them died six weeks after release, due to a bacterial infection, and at least two pandas perished during training, according to state media reports at the time.

Each failure and loss in China were met with fierce public backlash, and the pressure has likely led researchers to err on the side of caution in releasing more pandas, Huang said. “The progress has been slow because the species is so valuable, it’s like a treasure. Any misstep will have huge consequences in the public domain,” he said.

Restoring panda habitat

Habitat loss and fragmentation remain the biggest threat to wild pandas. By the early 2010s, some of China’s most prominent panda experts had warned that the success in breeding the bears in captivity had masked a critical conservation failure: the species’ rapidly vanishing natural habitat.

Over the past few decades, China has boosted the number of panda reserves from 12 to 67, but many are interspersed with villages and human infrastructure. This has confined many panda subpopulations to isolated patches of habitat carved by roads, railways, dams and farms, cutting them off from new bamboo forests and potential mates. Some groups comprise fewer than 10 individual bears.

Climate change is aggravating the problem. Studies show that a temperature rise of more than 3 degrees Celsius will result in mass death of bamboo, said Yang Hongbo, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who focuses on panda habitat.

In 2021, China took a significant step by establishing the Giant Panda National Park, spanning three provinces and covering an area more than twice the size of Yellowstone. The park aims to link existing reserves and reconnect isolated subpopulations.

“It’s all about the habitat, ultimately, for supporting the wild pandas, for growing the wild population,” Songer said.

With enough habitat, the hope is that in the future, panda cubs can be trained in the location where they will eventually be released. “When they’re ready, we only need to remove the fences around their training sites,” said Zhang, the rewilding keeper. “It’s like choosing a home for them to settle into in advance.”

For now, the Chinese government remains committed to breeding pandas in captivity and loaning them to foreign zoos. It has also signaled that it will no longer tolerate overt opposition to “panda diplomacy,” and moved to contain the nationalist backlash.

In December, police in Dujiangyan arrested two online influencers for spreading false rumors about pandas being abused in the US and “inciting opposition” to the panda exchange program. (The suspects are also accused of raking in profits of more than $23,000 through live streaming and fundraising from their followers.) Since May last year, Sichuan authorities have arrested four groups of “extreme” animal rights activists accused of slandering and harassing Chinese panda experts.

Alongside the flurry of arrests intended to deter future “extreme” activism, authorities have ramped up efforts to counter negative opinions about the panda exchange program, although not everyone’s convinced.

A visitor to the Beijing Zoo described pandas as “indispensable” to China. Asked for his view about loaning pandas abroad, he replied with a laugh: “The fewer we send, the better.”

Back at the Chengdu panda base, Hua Hua, the 4-year-old celebrity panda, enjoyed her breakfast of bamboo shoots while the crowd oohed and aahed at her every move. The bear has become a national sensation for her unique looks: for many, she resembles a giant triangular rice ball when she sits.

Others love her chill vibes – a subject of envy for millions of young people struggling to find work in China’s slowing economy.

“She’s not competitive at all. We humans exhaust ourselves every day, longing to ‘lie flat’ and take it easy, but we can’t. Yet Hua Hua can,” said Deng Shoujuan, a staff member at the base.

Qi Qi, a 36-year-old Chengdu local who has visited the base more than 100 times in the past year, is in favor of sending pandas abroad.

“China is the homeland of pandas, but everyone should be able feel the warmth and joy they bring. The giant panda is a gift to humanity, a gift to the world,” she said.

But A’Qiu, the fan who bikes to the base each day to film its most famous resident, says there’s one panda he never wants to see go overseas.

“Don’t even think about Hua Hua,” he said.

An undersea fiber optic cable between Latvia and Sweden was damaged on Sunday, likely as a result of external influence, Latvia said, triggering an investigation by local and NATO maritime forces in the Baltic Sea.

“We have determined that there is most likely external damage and that it is significant,” Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina told reporters following an extraordinary government meeting.

Latvia is coordinating with NATO and the countries of the Baltic Sea region to clarify the circumstances, she said separately in a post on X.

Latvia’s navy earlier on Sunday said it had dispatched a patrol boat to inspect a ship and that two other vessels were also subject to investigation.

Up to several thousand commercial vessels make their way through the Baltic Sea at any given time, and a number of them passed the broken cable on Sunday, data from the MarinTraffic ship tracking service showed.

One such ship, the Malta-flagged bulk carrier Vezhen, was closely followed by a Swedish coast guard vessel on Sunday evening, MarineTraffic data showed, and the two were heading in toward the southern Swedish coastline.

It was not immediately clear if the Vezhen, which passed the fiber optic cable at 0045 GMT on Sunday, was subject to investigation.

A Swedish coastguard spokesperson declined to comment on the Vezhen or the position of coastguard ships.

“We are in a stage where we cannot give any information,” the spokesperson said. “Exactly how we are involved we cannot say.”

Bulgarian shipping company Navigation Maritime Bulgare, which listed the Vezhen among its fleet, did not immediately reply when called and emailed by Reuters outside of office hours.

NATO cooperation

Swedish navy spokesperson Jimmie Adamsson earlier told Reuters it was too soon to say what caused the damage to the cable or whether it was intentional or a technical fault.

“NATO ships and aircrafts are working together with national resources from the Baltic Sea countries to investigate and, if necessary, take action,” the alliance said in a statement on Sunday.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said his country was cooperating closely with NATO and Latvia.

“Sweden will contribute important capabilities to the ongoing effort to investigate the suspected incident,” Kristersson said on X.

NATO said last week it would deploy frigates, patrol aircraft and naval drones in the Baltic Sea to help protect critical infrastructure and reserved the right to take action against ships suspected of posing a security threat.

The military alliance is taking the action, dubbed “Baltic Sentry”, following a string of incidents in which power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines have been damaged in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Finnish police last month seized a tanker carrying Russian oil and said they suspected the vessel had damaged the Finnish-Estonian Estlink 2 power line and four telecoms cables by dragging its anchor across the seabed.

Finland’s prime minister in a statement said the latest cable damage highlighted the need to increase protection for critical undersea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.

The cable that broke on Sunday linked the Latvian town of Ventspils with Sweden’s Gotland island, and was damaged in Sweden’s exclusive economic zone, the Latvian navy said.

Communications providers were able to switch to alternative transmission routes, the cable’s operator, Latvian State Radio and Television Centre (LVRTC), said in a statement, adding it was seeking to contract a vessel to begin repairs.

“The exact nature of the damage can only be determined once cable repair work begins,” LVRTC said.

A spokesperson for the operator said the cable, laid at depths of more than 50 metres (164 ft), was damaged on early Sunday but declined to give an exact time of the incident.

Unlike seabed gas pipelines and power cables, which can take many months to repair after damage, fiber optic cables that have suffered damage in the Baltic Sea have generally been restored within weeks.

A Swedish Post and Telecom Authority spokesperson said it was aware of the situation but had no further comment.

Congo has severed diplomatic ties with Rwanda as fighting between Rwanda-backed rebels and government forces rages around the key eastern city of Goma, leaving at least 13 peacekeepers and foreign soldiers dead and displacing thousands of civilians.

The M23 rebel group has made significant territorial gains along the border with Rwanda in recent weeks, closing in on Goma, the provincial capital that has a population of around 2 million and is a regional hub for security and humanitarian efforts.

Congo, the United States and U.N. experts accuse Rwanda of backing M23, which is mainly made up of ethnic Tutsis who broke away from the Congolese army more than a decade ago. It’s one of about 100 armed groups that have been vying for a foothold in the mineral-rich region, where a long-running conflict has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.

The Congolese Foreign ministry said late Saturday it was severing diplomatic ties with Rwanda and pulling out all diplomatic staff from the country “with immediate effect.”

Rwanda’s government denies backing the rebels, but last year acknowledged that it has troops and missile systems in eastern Congo to safeguard its security, pointing to a buildup of Congolese forces near the border. U.N. experts estimate there are up to 4,000 Rwandan forces in Congo.

Rwanda’s foreign minister, Olivier Nduhungirehe, told The Associated Press on Sunday that the decision to sever diplomatic ties was a unilateral move by Congo “that was even published on social media before being sent to our embassy.”

“For us, we took appropriate measures to evacuate our remaining diplomat in Kinshasa, who was under permanent threat by Congolese officials. And this was achieved on Friday, one day before the publication of this so-called note verbale on social media,” he said.

The U.N. Security Council moved up an emergency meeting on the escalating violence in eastern Congo to Sunday. Congo requested the meeting, which had originally been scheduled for Monday.

On Sunday morning, heavy gunfire resonated across Goma, just a few kilometers (miles) from the front line, while scores of displaced children and adults fled the Kanyaruchinya camp, one of the largest in eastern Congo, right near the Rwandan border, and headed south to Goma.

“We are fleeing because we saw soldiers on the border with Rwanda throwing bombs and shooting,” said Safi Shangwe, who was heading to Goma.

“We are tired and we are afraid, our children are at risk of starving,” she added.

Some of the displaced worried they will not be safe in Goma either.

“We are going to Goma, but I heard that there are bombs in Goma, too, so now we don’t know where to go,” said Adèle Shimiye.

Hundreds of people attempted to flee to Rwanda through the “Great Barrier” border crossing east of Goma on Sunday. Migration officers carefully checked travel documents.

“I am crossing to the other side to see if we will have a place of refuge because for the moment, security in the city is not guaranteed,” Muahadi Amani, a resident of Goma, told the AP.

Earlier in the week, the rebels seized Sake, 27 kilometers (16 miles) from Goma, as concerns mounted that the city could soon fall.

Congo’s army said Saturday it fended off an M23 offensive with the help of allied forces, including U.N. troops and soldiers from the Southern African Development Community Mission, also known as SAMIDRC.

Seven South African troops with SAMIDIRC, as well as two serving with the U.N. peacekeeping force, have been killed in recent days, South Africa’s ministry of defense said in a statement Saturday.

A U.N. official told The Associated Press that a Uruguayan peacekeeper was also killed on Saturday. The official spoke on on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak on the matter publicly. Meanwhile, the U.N. in Malawi said that three Malawian peacekeepers were killed.

Since 2021, Congo’s government and allied forces, including SAMIDRC and U.N. troops, have been keeping M23 away from Goma.

The U.N. peacekeeping force entered Congo more than two decades ago and has around 14,000 peacekeepers on the ground.