Thousands run for freedom of movement in Palestine marathon
Bethlehem: Thousands of Palestinian and international runners on Friday took part in the sixth edition of the Palestine marathon in Bethlehem, aiming to shed light on the movement restrictions imposed in the Palestinian territories.
Starting near the Church of the Nativity, the annual race took the participants through the city's landmarks as well as the Aida refugee camp, as they ran along the Israeli separation wall in an event the Palestinian Olympic Committee began sponsoring last year.
"I come every year and I am here to break the barriers that Palestinians have. We do not have the freedom to do what we want," Muhsen al-Homouz, originally from Bethlehem, told Efe. "But I am also here to support the sport and encourage everyone to join in."
Photographers captured the festive atmosphere of the race, showing the diverse group of participants including individual runners, families with children, elderly people and people with disabilities.
Music played at the starting and finishing point while many of the participants carried Palestinian flags and banners of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement.
Around 7,000 runners, according to the news agency Maan, started the race at 8.00 am and went through the different categories of the event: the 42-kilometre marathon, the half marathon, the 10-kilometre race and the five-kilometre family run.
The marathon's cause of claiming the right to freedom of movement was best visually represented by the image of the participants running along the concrete wall which separates Bethlehem from Jerusalem.
The wall, built by Israel in 2003, cuts through the Palestinian territory of the West Bank and was declared illegal by the International Court of Justice a year after its construction.
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Indigo flights chaos: SCR to run special trains to clear passenger rush
Hyderabad (PTI): The South Central Railway on Saturday announced that it would run four special trains to manage the surge in passengers resulting from the large-scale cancellation of IndiGo flights here.
The move comes as flyers face significant disruption and long queues at the airport due to the cancellation.
A press release from the SCR said it is running the special trains to clear the extra rush of passengers to Chennai, Mumbai and Shalimar (Kolkata) from Hyderabad today.
Meanwhile, as many as 43 outbound Indigo flights were cancelled from here on Saturday, Rajiv Gandhi International Airport sources said.
ALSO READ: IndiGo cancels over 200 flights from Delhi, Mumbai on Saturday
Similarly, 26 incoming flights are also likely to be cancelled during the day, they said.
The flight cancellations drew ire from passengers, who thronged the IndiGo counters at the airport demanding to know the exact situation.
“This is utter nonsense! Digiyatra done, message received that departure has been rescheduled ahead of the scheduled departure and now upon arriving at Hyderabad airport coming to know at the security checkpoint that Indigo flight is cancelled,” Tarun Singha, former Ministry of Defence spokesperson said in a post on X.
“But the thing is if you don’t shout they do nothing. Example at Hyderabad Airport, there was no staff no flight information for an hour. Then a fellow passenger started shouting on mic and an Indigo staff appeared finally,” a netizen said in a post.
On Friday, when IndiGo cancelled over 1,000 flights from across airports, its CEO Pieter Elbers apologised in a video message for the major inconvenience caused to passengers due to the disruptions.
In the one-way video communication, Elbers also said that the airline was expecting fewer than 1,000 flights on Saturday.
