before. one on east investigates whether history is repeating itself. on al-jazeera. getting to the heart of the matter if will stuff i can see that such a supreme leader calls you today and says let's have told us would you accept facing realities what do you think. like majority of people think a peaceful unification is the only option for prosperity of south korea here this story on talk to al-jazeera.

claims of a chemical attack on president trump says there will be a response against the syrian government. and i'm a clown this is out sara live from london also coming up polls close after a strong turnout in hungary's parliamentary elections the party of the prime minister viktor orban is that expected to win. the nigerian army says it has rescued one hundred forty nine hostages held by boko haram. and plastic pollution on the sea river cleanup efforts on one of the world's worst environmental blocks. so that medics say dozens of people have been killed in a suspected chemical attack on a rebel held area of eastern ghouta the syrian government has dismissed reports as

a fabrication the u.s. is calling for an international response if the strike on doom is confirmed the touch you can name has the latest in a warning you may find some images in this report distressing. entire families babies children adults dead the people who remained in dumas thought they could shelter from the air strikes in the basements of building instead witnesses say they suffocated from a suspected chemical attack i saw how that looked in a darkened room with chemicals many children have been killed in tents airstrikes by the syrian government and its allies began on saturday. witnesses reported a barrel bomb with some sort of gas being dropped rescuers say they're struggling to get to the survivors and retrieve the bodies of the dead because of a strong chlorine like smell they don't have the protective gear they need the

health care system in duma has been decimated. unfortunately would be limited number of medical suffering notes to go to. the sometimes and the treatment people and we've seen people. have seen people should dine with them to get it's reported that ambulances and a hospital were hit by air strikes and the red crescent can no longer operate leaving a small team of medical professionals with scarce supplies to tend to the injured the familiar cycle of recriminations denials and calls for action has begun using language heard after last year's confirmed chemical attack in qana coom which killed more than eighty people the syrians and the russians called the allegations farcical and staged the russians offered to send their own experts to investigate and disprove the claims the united states called for an immediate end to the attacks and for the international community to respond it said russia was betraying

its commitment to the u.n. and the chemical weapons convention people say life in duma already difficult after weeks of intense fighting has become even more. more miserable on sunday the syrian government says it met with members of jaish alice lamb and reached a deal in exchange for the release of prisoners fighters and their families will be allowed safe passage out of duma jaish al islam has not confirmed this but with the syrian government's recent advances in duma it appears their options are increasingly limited natasha going to name al-jazeera amman and now we're receiving reports that buses have begun entering doomer as part of the agreement between the army of islam and russia the pact includes a cease fire in the evacuation of civilians from the area will produce more on that as we get it in the meantime let's speak to she have returns he joins us from washington d.c. and she had but let's talk more on the chemical attack the alleged chemical attack

at what's been the reaction there in the united states. well overnight we have a statement from the state department calling for an international response something always half of it over half of the statement they're attacking russia for its support of assad and then this morning sunday morning in the u.s. donald trump began tweeting amongst the sentiments he expressed he actually mentioned president putin by name which is something that he doesn't do it hasn't done in the past when he said president putin russia and iran are responsible for backing animal a big price to pay so there's some debate now is one of what that actually means big price to pay but he continued if president obama had crossed his stated red line in the sand the syrian disaster would have ended long ago and would have been history referencing twenty thirteen when president obama did not use military action following an alleged chemical weapons attack by the syrian government president obama had said chemical weapons were a red line president obama at the time going for congressional approval for

military action he did not have congressional support he did not have public opinion on his side and he didn't actually have all trumps of opinion on his side either don't try to argue against any military action against syria then following the alleged chemical weapons attack things have changed we're told from the homeland security adviser to the white house that no options are being taken off the table out we know this time last year following another alleged chemical weapons attack by the syrian government donald trump did order an air strike on a syrian air base we got twenty seconds to say she had plenty of debate about president trump and what it could mean about a big price to pay what options are there for him. well i mean i guess we can we just have to speculate but we would assume that certainly have the same option to use this time last year is on the table ask for anything further any i mean any blogger military intervention that does seem unlikely donald trump wants to get out of syria he said already this week he wants his generals to pull the several thousand u.s. troops out of syria who are there combating the islamic state he does not want to

get embroiled in the administration at least he doesn't see any good options for the u.s. there he says regional actors need to be to solve middle eastern problems all right she had thanks very much indeed several times reporting there from washington d.c. . now polls are closing in hungary's parliamentary election following a heated campaign dominated by the issue of immigration the prime minister viktor orban is seeking a third consecutive term and is expected to win but opposition parties could make up some ground those opposition parties tapping into the public anger over claims of corruption against the government's well jenna hole has more now from the capital of budapest. there were early signs of a record high turnout that could favor the opposition in preventing hungary's

ruling party feeders and prime minister viktor orban from winning a third consecutive two thirds majority in parliament through what's at stake well we've already said everything about that what's at stake is the future of hungary it's not only party a government or a prime minister that we're choosing for ourselves but a future as well voting is secret but i'll reveal that i voted for thirty two votes for thirty s. because i thought that was the safest bit. in the past or ban has altered the constitution changing the electro law and curbing media freedoms and he's promised to go further targeting n.g.o.s and civil society possibly even the independence of the judiciary. this is a country in which allegations of high level corruption rife in which public services like health and education are in desperate need of investment and yet state run media is full of scare stories about muslim migration and even an anti semitic campaign aimed at the billionaire george soros and his network of pro-democracy probably immigration n.g.o.s here he is surrounded by the opposition

figures holding bolt cutters getting ready to tear down the fence that big band built to keep the refugees out and. opposition figures say hungary's future in europe is at stake twenty eight years after the change of regime this is the first election the beach has some not just political but he's told the core combatants. all about the hesitation between a vest then the next who is our friends are barely in the poll really. most goal. this is under stake. yet it is the same opposition figures whose failure to unite behind a single party makes it so hard to be treated as and or panel the prime minister has used his power not just to undermine democratic values at home but also in

building fences and rejecting refugee quotas to go and test the european union in a wider sense therefore a win that is not a two thirds majority win would amount to a substantial defeat but i. live now in budapest jenny what are the latest predictions about how the voting will go. well turn out to the extent that it points to a result has been consistently high throughout the day certainly much higher than two thousand and ten and two thousand and fourteen the last two big victories for three days and victor all banned that would suggest potentially high turnout of opposition voters which may or may not point to some sort of a surprise result later we're told that some polling stations polls are meant to have closed of course are still inundated with voters many of them young voters here in budapest they tend to vote for the government that's anecdotal let me bring in my guest to see what he thinks. he's not a list with

a think tank an independent think tank or political capital good of you to join us what do you think is there the potential here for a surprise there is the potential that it's too early to say anything concrete because there we have seen signals that constituencies turn out traits which are usually strongholds for she does so it can also happen if she does could mobilize its voters however of course high turnout we can go for high turnout. opposition parties could mobilize their voters more and it could benefit either side potentially is there a chance do you think of mr obama in fact losing power or is that a stretch too far. i think three options are opened up on wins we did two thirds majority that she does wins with a simple majority but it's going to happen if you just lose it's majority in the parliament however is that is that a realistic prospect are we just looking at the possibility i would say it's a possibility i would say the heart the the most likely situation scenario would be

that he does wins with a simple majority or even we did two thirds majority but i would say the most realistic scenario is that fitness means we disapprove majority but let's not forget of course that the second big party in the running here i mean let's be careful what we wish for in a sense the second big party is your pick a far right party with new. nazi roots however it has tried to dress itself up as a more centrist force in the last couple of years it's hardly an appetizing prospect is it either for voters all of the wider e.u. to see a far right party in power over viktor orban yes so does your big party the forest your big party has been applying a moderating strategy since two thousand and fourteen however i think it's not the question with whom he does might form a coalition but because she does leading citizen politician a couple of days ago and knows that she does would opt for him. you will actions in case he does would lose the elections would lose the simple majority in parliament

so viktor orban keeping his options open will leave it there and yardy as we see will the end of polls now although some remaining open later than usual to clear the crowds the options available seem pretty open at this point back to you all right john thanks very much indeed general reporting there from budapest. the nigerian army says it has rescued one hundred forty nine hostages all women and children held by boko haram in borno state in the northeast of the country the women and children were being held in the village of yeti money could those rescue do not include kidnapped schoolgirls from two book and she who are still missing amid interest as the details now from. the army said those rescue are residents of e.m.i. to quote a village in northeastern nigeria who was held captive by boko haram but they did not say for how long they've been held captive by the fighters the army said eight followed and the rescue followed an operation that they conducted on saturday where

they encountered bokhara fighters and in the ensuing firefight they killed three of them and also captured five now these people have been taken to hospital and are being treated and later to be profiled by the nigerian army and nigerian or for two years now what we've seen over the last few months or so is the book white arms ability to continue to adopt its losses they've been chased out of most of the areas they have occupied but they are able to adopt in smaller groups to attack isolated and vulnerable communities recently with seen them launch during attacks on the capital coming to the outskirts of my degree which is a city that has been in their crosshairs for a very long time since the start of this into the agency the nigerian army said and the nigerian government confirmed that the book was around fighters have been sort of degraded but what we've seen over the last one year or so is the strategy by blackwater to launch several types of operations suicide bombings during attacks on

military formations ice at such an isolated communities abductions and kidnappings in the north east of nigeria in other words spoken of is telling the nigerian society that we are still very much on. i thought come here on al-jazeera i i. confrontations and celebrations in brazil as a former president needed to sell the begin serving prison sentence for corruption . was. an dying breed protest by members of pakistan's pushed and community they say they're being targeted by security forces. hallo it's been raining recently in afghanistan turkmenistan that if you see the

client letter quite clearly that still quite active and it trails down through iran towards the gulf not behind it the weather's fine again it start raining terror on twenty one degrees is the forecast here there's a small circulation in the eastern med to shout seem likely to be syria lebanon the temp she held about twenty or below as a result of that it will keep winding up of the next day or so doing quite active i think in northern syria and east and turkey a few showers a quite possible iraq west and iran but generally speaking it's looking quite fine here but you still got snowshoe up in the high ground all for example northern afghanistan took my stand as an example. south of this what is the remains really these bits of cloud here might give a few spots of right now i think nothing more than that is generally dry if the dusty picture throughout the arabian peninsula and we see an increase in rain in the last day or so and in the forecast certainly maybe you're down to botswana and into south africa looks like a good line there and that's the one to watch for developing showers and i think

they'll become quite big in the next day or so not in the western cape but in central and eastern parts of south africa.

and again a reminder the top stories here on al-jazeera medical staff say dozens of people were killed by a suspected chemical attack in the besieged rippling craigs in syria many more including children have been receiving treatment. polls have closed in the hungriest parliamentary elections prime minister viktor orban is expected to win a third consecutive in an election dominated by the issue of immigration. the nigerian army says it has rescued one hundred forty nine hostages held by boko haram in borno state in the northeast of the country. police in germany say they may have foiled a potential attack on the marathon on sunday but when it came has more now from one stone. berlin the police confirming that they have arrested six individuals varying in age from eighteen to twenty one in connection with what they say was potentially

preparation for a crime targeting the berlijn half marathon it's been staged in the german capital today a point to make is that that event attracts thousands of people not only as participants but also spectators the point the police are reinforcing here is that they believe that the elevated sense of tension in germany following events here in munster on saturday where a vehicle was steered into a packed crowd and people were killed in that incident and then the perpetrator killed himself that they believe that was a reason for them out of an abundance of caution to move to make the arrests concerned and to search properties in different parts of the city and to search vehicles associated with those individuals brazil's former president lula da silva has started his twelve year jail term for corruption. arrived it could be cheaper prison under the cover of darkness after finally agreeing to hand himself in following a twelve hour standoff with authorities his supporters have protested against his

imprisoned while others celebrated saying the guilty must pay for their crimes. has more from outside the prison critics evil. the former president lula da silva is serving the first day of his twelve year sentence in the top floor of this federal police prison behind me he's been given a special suite he's had a television installed so he can watch his favorite football team get indians play a live game today against biomed. he's separated segregated from the other prisoners perhaps treatment that befits a former president but he is still a convicted prisoner he will be spending twelve years in prison probably not the whole time here he'll probably be moved to another prison at some stage perhaps closer to sell powerball which was where he used to live there has been some demonstrations of support and against. in the days leading up to his imprisonment they've pretty much subsided now here outside the prison including chiba there's

a small group of protesters over there over to that side behind the small police cordon really expressing support for lula. legal team all still planning to try to resist the fight against the imprisonment but there are other cases pending against him so this twelve year is one month that he's been sentenced to for money laundering and corruption could be increased if he's found guilty of those other crimes in the meantime he says that he's innocent of all the charges against him that it's a political campaign to stop him running in october's presidential elections something that he still plans to fight and something his supporters say that he could and should win israel's defense minister avigdor lieberman has angered palestinians by saying that there are no naive people in dancer and that those taking part in protests are hamas military wing activists at least thirty palestinians have been killed by israeli forces since demonstrations along the

garden israeli border began ten days ago thousands more been injured palestinians plan to hold protests against the israeli occupation for the next five weeks. doctors in goals are struggling to treat those palestinians injured in friday's protests or spittles have declared a state of emergency a severe shortage of supplies meant has more from one of god's. this is just one of the rooms and you have to understand that the whole hospital looks like this we have injured after injured now this young man was had received two bullets in his legs he needs further treatment he needs to get out of gaza for the treatment but that the moment he won't be able to and then we have this young man who is also in that situation these two were quite close to the fence however in the bed next door there is young amir he is only nineteen years old and actually he was not anywhere close to the no go zone he was watching for my father when he got hit by a sniper now what i showed you now is what you will see from room to room. patients

suffering doctors working over hour to try to solve this situation certainly this is an emergency situation yesterday the health officials here in gaza have actually declared a state of emergency for the health system it is an overload. thousands of people from pakistan's pashtun community are attending a rally in pasha to demand rights and protection the so-called the pastern protection movement says the security forces are carrying out extra judicial arrests and killings matheson has this report. fury and frustration and push alba posted about the chanting crowd photographs of pashto said to have disappeared or be killed these protesters blame the police and the military i think this was this was an emotional eruption. did these young you would they get there then they started this moment and i think they believe you will continue this

moment across and it's not only the first one from the private jet it did and even the pakistani. society they are also supporting the of the moment. thousands of pashtun have moved to the southern port city of karachi fleeing from their homes in northern tribal areas to escape violence along pakistan's border with afghanistan but pashtuns say they've been targeted by the police and the army since the emergence of the pakistani taliban whose leaders are also said to come from close to the pashtuns northern tribal homeland. but. the most recent killing in karachi was not. an aspiring pashtun mortal who his father says had no links to rebel groups pashtun say they want the senior police officer involved in the killing of not keep to face the death penalty. they deny these

anti-government demonstrations and say their demands a simple first demand was to arrest the second was stop him alleviation pushed on women especially the tribal women and children at the security check they had thirty one was a took cleans the land mine which was given in especially. but as support for the protests grows the government may be forced to do more to show that pashtuns are not being targeted rob matheson al jazeera. a man has died in a fire truck four officers were injured tackling the fast moving blaze the sixty seven year old victim was found unconscious in his fiftieth floor apartment which will thora to say it was almost entirely engulfed in flames. libya has long been a male dominated society years of conflict and an increase in the listeners' of

marginalized women even more but female activism is on the rise in some parts of the country as mahmood reports now from misrata. their voices are not often heard it but a community leader is determined to change that she wants women to play a bigger role in improving society. at this fair she and other female campaigners have taken the initiative to fundraise for those most in need the sick and the poor . the income of the spare is dedicated to cancer patients in the city other than that we've also created job opportunities by opening a weaving workshop for poorly it's whom we've also trained. but it is not easy women find themselves at the back of every queue and it comes to seeking help even when it is not for themselves women here say they're the first female

activists to do this type of work helping others in the city of misrata and they're planning to continue but in a maze dominated society they say they face a lot of the challenges. if a radio announcer says in libyan society social restrictions on women are a major handicap and whenever a woman progresses she gets picked on not just by the men but other women too she tries to address those issues through her radio show. there are several obstacles derailing women's activism i faced a lot of difficulties at first our society did not accept the idea of a female presenter media used to be politicised during the former regime and asked people activists in order for us to express ourselves we need a lot of strength and resilience. this presentation to cancer patients is proof altima and her friends are making some progress it is want to step out of time but

they remain hopeful gender equality is not just a distant dream. misrata. the longest river in asia has become one of the world's most polluted the young sea has long been a lifeline for millions of chinese but now plastic from the river is slowly killing life in the east china sea and beyond it's quite hard to reports now from shanghai three generations of new ijaz family are out cleaning up plastic along the mouth of the gang's the river one of the worst spots in the world for plastic pollution. i'm here to protect the ocean there's a lot of trash on the beach we saw a video where turtle inhaled a straw and it bled a lot so when people try to help get the straw out of it's no littering and dangerous marine species. one of the biggest plastic consumers in the world china's

numbers are staggering for instance package delivery services in two thousand and sixteen used fourteen billion the plastic bags and with the rapid increase of food delivery options it's estimated that sixty million plastic containers are used each day many cannot be recycled. one campaigner at the environmental group that organizes these volunteer cleanup outings says people seeing the pollution drives the message home alone. i think we can look beyond the numbers when we're talking about the marine waste to public statistics of their abstract it's easier to bring them here to see with their own eyes and participate in activities like this that's a more direct way to make the public realize the severity of the problem. according to an environmental journal the yangtze river and its tributaries here carries one point five million tons of plastics into the sea each year through some of china's biggest cities the last one here in shanghai before it meets the east china sea and

then the plastic makes its way to the pacific ocean nature magazine recently reported that what's known as the great pacific garbage patch is much larger than previously thought twice the size of france and containing seventy nine thousand tons of plastic china's environmental protection ministry admits there's a big problem and recently announced that a restructuring plan is in the works. to plan that will create better conditions for fighting the battles against pollution and improving ecological environment we're obliged responsible and have every reason to do a better job in coming days. and the pace of that job needs to quicken as scientists predict that if the flow of plastic into the oceans is not slowed by two thousand and fifty the amount of plastic in the oceans will outweigh the fish it's got hotter al-jazeera shanghai but more of course on our website. is the

address all the news we're covering and plenty of comment and then. all right just time for an update of the headlines here on al-jazeera and the united nations security council is to meet on monday at the request of the united states to discuss reports of a chemical attack on a rebel held area of eastern kuta in syria medics say dozens of people have been killed in the suspected gas strike in duma of the syrian government and its russian allies a denying involvement u.s. president donald trump says there will be a big price to pay if the chemical attack is proven. was moved from the civil defense group the white helmet says there is clear evidence of a chemical attack. and we have seen. we have published this and we have seen a lot of things we have we have photos we had pictures we have. been

evacuated after being gets it by these gases we're receiving reports that buses have begun entering duma as part of the agreement between the army of islam and russia the pact includes a cease fire and the evacuation of civilians from the area polls have officially closed in hungary as general election although some stations remain open to allow remaining queues of people to vote and seem a gratian prime minister viktor orban is expected to win a third term however voter turnout appears to be far higher than in the two thousand and fourteen election which could point to a strong showing for all bands nearest rival. nigeria's army says it has a rescued one hundred forty nine hostages held by boko haram in north eastern borno state the women and children were being held by the armed group in the village of yeti monday coulda nigerian soldiers killed three of the fighters. former

brazilian president lula da silva has begun his twelve year term for corruption a little arrived at the prison under the cover of darkness off to find the green to hand him self and following a twelve hour standoff with or thirty's police in germany say they may have foiled a potential attack on the berlin half marathon on sunday they've arrested six people whom they suspected of preparing a grave city in danger of violent act that sets inside story coming right up africa . popular openness does voters in hungary go to the polls a conscious.