‘A gift of love’! LuLu Yusuff Ali saves Kerala woman's house from bank repossession

News Network
December 7, 2021

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LulLu Group chairman and managing director MA Yusuff Ali has saved a Kerala woman’s house from being repossessed by a local bank in a random act of kindness.

The UAE-based businessman was approached by the woman, identified as Amina, while he was visiting people who rescued him and several others during a helicopter crash eight months ago, it is learnt.

Yusuff Ali, his wife Shabira, and five others, including the pilot and co-pilot, survived the crash following a forced landing of their helicopter in a swamp amid heavy rains and winds on April 11 in Panangad, a village in Kochi. The accident took place when Ali was on his way to meet with a relative at a hospital in Nettoor.

“Yusuff Ali and his team went to visit the families that rescued him during the crucial moments after the crash. While he was walking towards his car, an elderly lady named Amina ran up to him with several bank documents in her hand,” V Nandakumar, director of marketing and communications at Lulu Group, Abu Dhabi explained.

The incident took place on Sunday, December 5. Amina said her house was soon to be repossessed by a neighbourhood bank due to non-payment of dues. 

In a now-viral video that was shared by bystanders, Amina can be seen desperately asking Yusuffali for assistance.

“The bank will repossess my home. Please help me,” she is seen saying in the video. Without a moment’s notice, the UAE-based businessman promised her his support.

A day later, senior Lulu Group officials have confirmed to Khaleej Times that Yusuffali’s personal staff went to the bank, paid the outstanding amount of approximately Dh18,506 (INR 3,80,000) to the Keechery Service Co-operative Bank. “Yusuffali has also paid Dh2,435 (INR 50,000) which will go towards Amina’s family’s medical expenses,” added Nandakumar.

“The title deed of her house and other documents would be returned to her in two days,” he explained.

Ali had returned to the crash site and visited villagers who rescued him, after fully recovering from injuries he sustained during the accident.

The group said he first met with Rajesh and his wife Biji, a local policewoman.

Yusuffali recollected it was Rajesh who first came to his rescue after the chopper made a belly landing in the waterlogged plot of land. He thanked Rajesh and his wife for their invaluable rescue work during adverse weather conditions, without realising who Yusuffali was.

“It was Biji who rushed to a nearby police station to inform cops about the accident,” said the Group. The head of the retail business presented the family with gifts and a cheque, which Ali called ‘a gift of love’.

Yusuffali spent nearly 30 minutes with the family and promised Rajesh he would extend all the support that was needed to organise his cousin’s wedding.

He also visited Peter, the owner of the land where the crash took place and handed gifts over to him.

The UAE-based Indian businessman and billionaire is very closely involved in several social and charitable humanitarian activities. Earlier this year, he saved Kerala man Becks Krishnan from death row after he paid Dh 500,000 in blood money. 

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Agencies
March 26,2025

The airstrikes led by the United States have killed at least 25 civilians in Yemen over the past week, marking the deadliest week of bombing on the country since the final months of the Washington-backed Saudi war in January 2022.

In a report released on Tuesday, the Yemen Data Project said the 25 civilians were the victims of 38 US-led aerial assaults on March 15-21, adding that 28 people were also injured in the attacks.

The independent tracker also said that 21 out of the 38 US air raids hit non-military, civilian targets.

“Civilian targets hit included: a medical storage facility, a medical center, a school, a wedding hall, residential areas, a cotton gin facility, a health office, Bedouin tents, and Al-Eiman University,” it said.

The deadliest US strike in the first week of US bombing campaign struck a residential area in Yemen’s northwestern Sa'ada province, killing 10 civilians and wounding 11 others, among them children.

The US began bombing Yemen on March 15, a few days after Yemen resumed its operation against Israeli-linked ships in response to Israel’s Gaza aid blockade that violated a ceasefire with the Hamas resistance group.

The Yemeni Armed Forces began their anti-Israel naval campaign in November 2023, a month after the occupying regime waged a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

The Yemeni forces halted their attacks in solidarity with the Palestinians in January, when Israel accepted a three-phase Gaza ceasefire.

Two months later, however, Israel unilaterally broke the Gaza truce and resumed its brutal onslaught on the besieged territory.

On Tuesday, Yemeni media reported 17 US strikes on Sa'ada and two more on the nearby 'Amran province.

The reports said American warplanes carried out "aggressive air raids... causing material damage to citizens' property," but gave no details of casualties.

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Agencies
March 24,2025

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The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has warned that the tight Israeli blockade on the entry of humanitarian supplies into the Gaza Strip is pushing the coastal territory closer to an acute hunger crisis.

Philippe Lazzarini made the remarks in a social media post, in which he noted that the siege, which is preventing food, medicines, water and fuel from entering the region, has lasted longer than what was in place in the first phase of the war.

Israel has banned the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza since March 4, following the expiry of the first phase of a ceasefire and an agreement with Hamas resistance movement on the exchange of Israeli captives for Palestinian prisoners.

Lazzarini warned that Gaza’s population depends on imports via Israeli-occupied territories for their survival.

“Every day that passes without the entry of aid means more children go to bed hungry, diseases spread & deprivation deepens,” he said.

“Every day without food inches Gaza closer to an acute hunger crisis,” the UNRWA chief noted.

Lazzarini described the banning of aid as a collective punishment on Gaza’s population – the vast majority of which are children, women and ordinary men.

He called for the siege to be lifted and for humanitarian aid and commercial supplies to be brought into Gaza “uninterrupted and at scale.”

Backed by the United States and its Western allies, Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against the Israeli regime in response to its decades-long campaign of oppression against Palestinians.

The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed at least 50,021 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 113,274 others. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under the rubble.

On November 21 last year, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its deadly war on the blockaded coastal sliver.

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News Network
March 20,2025

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Gaza’s health ministry says Israel’s renewed savagery has led to the massacre of at least 970 people in 48 hours.

The wave of deadly airstrikes that shattered a fragile ceasefire in Gaza on Tuesday has so far claimed the lives of at least 970 people across the besieged territory, the health ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

Before the resumption of the offensive, the death toll from the regime’s 15 months of genocidal war recorded by the ministry at midday on March 17 stood at 48,577.

By midday on Wednesday, the figure had risen to 49,547, the ministry said.

The health ministry also registered "one death and five severe injuries among foreign staff working for UN institutions.”

It said Israel attacked a UN headquarters in Deir el-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on Wednesday.

The victims had been taken to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, the health ministry said.

Israel's military denied attacking a UN building in Gaza.

The UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) confirmed the death of one of its staff by an explosive that was "dropped or fired" on its building in Deir el-Balah.

"An explosive ordnance was dropped or fired at the infrastructure and detonated inside the building,” it said, adding that five others were injured.

UNOPS Executive Director Jorge Moreira da Silva said he was "shocked and devastated" by the death of a staff member.

“This was not an accident.”  he said, adding that "attacks against humanitarian premises are a breach of international law."

Bulgaria's foreign ministry said later in the day that one of its citizens working for the United Nations was killed in Gaza, without specifying where in the territory.

Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel threatened on Tuesday that the massacre of women and children in Gaza was “only the beginning.” He stands accused of committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

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