PARIS: Veteran aid worker Jean-Pierre Delomier said he has seen it all responding to conflicts and disasters worldwide over the decades, but the Gaza war is by far “the worst.”
Returning from an eight-day mission to the south of the besieged Palestinian territory, the deputy director of Handicap International — Humanity & Inclusion (HI) said he was still “stunned.”
He told AFP he had never seen such a combination of “bombardment of an extremely densely populated and closed-off area, and a near-complete lack of access for humanitarian aid.”
Deliveries into the Gaza Strip have been reduced substantially since the start of the latest Israeli military campaign in the territory, sparked by Palestinian militant group Hamas carrying out a deadly attack in Israel on October 7.
The United Nations has warned of looming famine, and calls have grown for the Israeli authorities to let in and ensure the safe delivery of desperately needed aid waiting in lorries on the Egyptian side of the border.
“I saw kilometers (miles) of trucks queueing on four lanes, all waiting to get into Gaza,” said 61-year-old Delomier.
Foreign governments have scrambled to parachute in pallets of supplies from airplanes in recent weeks, but aid workers have warned they only cover a tiny fraction of needs and the method is hugely expensive.
“Planes fly over to drop a few pallets, whereas just behind (the border) there are kilometers of pallets waiting that could just be let in,” he said, incensed.
The aid worker, who started his career in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s, said what he witnessed in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah was incomparable.
About 1.5 million of the territory’s 2.4 million residents have crammed into Rafah, squashed up against the closed Egyptian border, most after fleeing Israeli bombardment on other parts of the territory.
When food is available, restrictions make it extremely expensive.
And Israel air strikes have repeatedly hit the city.
Gazans, Delomier said, were caught in a “mousetrap, with only a trickle of aid — whereas all that is needed is right there next door — and bombardment.”
He said people sometimes tried to compare the situation in Gaza with the 1994 Rwanda genocide, the Syrian civil war since 2011, or even the ongoing conflict in Yemen.
But the crisis in Gaza “is the worst I have ever seen,” he said.
The territory has been under an Israeli blockade since 2007, when Hamas took control of it, prompting rights groups to say Gazans were trapped in an “open-air prison” even before the latest conflict.
Five months of war have ravaged the territory, and sparked unprecedented alarm among aid groups.
The latest Gaza war broke out after Hamas launched their attack on southern Israel, resulting in about 1,160 deaths, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
The militants also took around 250 hostages. Israel believes 99 of them remain alive in Gaza and that 31 have died.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 30,800 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. HI says around 90 percent of those killed were civilians.
Delomier said he worked in Rafah with the constant buzz of Israeli drones overhead.
“There was artillery fire and then, especially the constant buzzing of drones. The whole time, day and night, a permanent background noise,” he said.
Further north, conditions are even more dire and some residents have been reduced to eating animal fodder.
The United Nations on Tuesday called on the international community to “flood” Gaza with aid, after reports children are dying of starvation there.
Delomier said he was still reeling from what he saw of the situation.
“In fact, I am outraged,” he said.
Veteran aid worker says Gaza crisis ‘worst’ of his career
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Veteran aid worker says Gaza crisis ‘worst’ of his career
- Returning from an eight-day mission to the south of the besieged Palestinian territory, the deputy director of HI, said he was still “stunned”
- “I saw kilometers (miles) of trucks queueing on four lanes, all waiting to get into Gaza,” said 61-year-old Delomier
Hundreds of North Korean troops killed while fighting Ukraine, Seoul says
- Seoul says North Korea has suffered some 4,700 casualties so far, including injuries and deaths
- North Korean labor overseas is known as a source of the regime’s hard currency income
North Korea has suffered some 4,700 casualties so far, including injuries and deaths, though its troops have shown signs of improved combat capabilities over about six months by using modern weapons like drones, the lawmakers said.
In return for dispatching troops and supplying weapons to Russia, Pyongyang appears to have received technical assistance on spy satellites, as well as drones and anti-air missiles, they said.
“After six months of participation in the war, the North Korean military has become less inept, and its combat capability has significantly improved as it becomes accustomed to using new weapons such as drones,” Lee Seong-kweun, a member of the parliamentary intelligence committee, told reporters, after being briefed by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
Pyongyang earlier this week confirmed for the first time that it had sent troops to fight for Russia in the war in Ukraine under orders from leader Kim Jong Un and that it had helped regain control of Russian territory occupied by Ukraine.
North Korea’s unprecedented deployment of thousands of troops, as well as massive amounts of artillery ammunition and missiles, gave Russia a crucial battlefield advantage
in the western Kursk region and has brought the two economically and politically isolated countries closer.
Lee, the lawmaker, added that bodies of dead North Korean soldiers were cremated in Kursk before being shipped back home. Pyongyang is also believed to have sent about 15,000 workers to Russia, said the lawmakers, citing intelligence assessments.
North Korean labor overseas is known as a source of the regime’s hard currency income but UN sanctions prohibit the use of North Korean labor in third countries.
Syria’s foreign minister met State Dept officials in New York, sources say
- Damascus is keen to hear a realistic path forward from the United States for permanent sanctions relief while conveying a realistic timeline to deliver on Washington’s demands for the lifting of the sanctions, one of the sources said
WASHINGTON: Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shibani met with senior US State Department officials on Tuesday in New York, two sources familiar with the matter said, as Damascus seeks a clear road map from Washington on how to secure permanent sanctions relief.
Shibani has been in the United States for meetings at the United Nations, where he raised the three-star flag of Syria’s uprising as the official Syrian flag 14 years after the country’s civil war erupted. Syria’s long-time oppressive ruler, Bashar Assad, was ousted by a lightning rebel offensive in December.
Tuesday’s meeting was the first between US officials and Shibani to take place on US territory and comes after Syria responded earlier this month to a list of conditions set by Washington for possible partial sanctions relief.
It was not immediately clear who Shibani met with from the State Department, although one of the sources earlier said he was expected to meet with a group of US officials including Dorothy Shea, acting US ambassador to the United Nations.
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce confirmed that “some representatives of the Syrian interim authorities” were in New York for the UN meetings, but declined to say whether any meetings with American officials were planned.
“We continue to assess our Syria policy cautiously and will judge the interim authorities by their actions. We are not normalizing diplomatic relations with Syria at this time, and I can preview nothing for you regarding any meetings,” she said.
Damascus is keen to hear a realistic path forward from the United States for permanent sanctions relief while conveying a realistic timeline to deliver on Washington’s demands for the lifting of the sanctions, one of the sources said.
The United States last month handed Syria a list of eight conditions it wants Damascus to fulfill, including destroying any remaining chemical weapons stockpiles and ensuring foreigners are not given senior governing roles.
Reuters was first to report that Natasha Francheschi, deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, handed the list of conditions to Shibani at an in-person meeting on the sidelines of a Syria donor conference in Brussels on March 18.
Syria is in desperate need of sanctions relief to kickstart an economy collapsed by years of war, during which the United States, Britain and Europe imposed tough sanctions in a bid to put pressure on Assad.
In January, the US issued a six-month exemption for some sanctions to encourage humanitarian aid, but this has had limited effect.
In exchange for fulfilling all the US demands, Washington would extend that suspension for two years and possibly issue another exemption, sources told Reuters in March.
In its response to US demands, Syria pledges to set up a liaison office at the foreign ministry to find missing US journalist Austin Tice and detail its work to tackle chemical weapons stockpiles, including closer ties with a global arms watchdog.
But it had less to say on other key demands, including removing foreign fighters and granting the US permission for counterterrorism strikes, according to the letter.
Iraq drone attacks wound 5 Kurdish security personnel
IRBIL: Five Iraqi Kurdish security personnel were wounded in two drone attacks in northern Iraq in less than 48 hours, authorities in the autonomous Kurdistan region said on Tuesday.
Authorities blamed a “terrorist group” for the separate attacks in a region that has seen repeated clashes between Turkish forces and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
“A terrorist group launched two separate drone attacks yesterday (Monday) and this morning targeting peshmerga bases” in Dohuk province, the region’s security council said. The attacks wounded five peshmerga, it added.
Kamran Othman of the US-based Community Peacemakers Teams, who monitor Turkish operations in Iraqi Kurdistan, confirmed the attacks but was unable to identify the perpetrators.
He added that the peshmerga were establishing a new post in a “sensitive area” that has long been the site of tension between the PKK and Turkish forces. There was no immediate claim for the attacks, which came weeks after the PKK announced a ceasefire with Turkiye in response to their jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan’s historic call to the group to dissolve and disarm.
Blacklisted as a “terrorist group” by the EU and the US, the PKK has fought the Turkish state for most of the past four decades.
US hit more than 1,000 targets in Yemen since mid-March
- Since March 15, “USCENTCOM strikes have hit over 1,000 targets, killing Houthi fighters and leaders...,” Parnell said
- CENTCOM on Sunday had put the figure at more than 800 targets
WASHINGTON: US forces have struck more than 1,000 targets in Yemen since Washington launched the latest round of its air campaign against the Houthi militants in mid-March, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
The Houthis began targeting shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in late 2023 and the United States responded with strikes against them starting early the following year.
Since March 15, “USCENTCOM strikes have hit over 1,000 targets, killing Houthi fighters and leaders... and degrading their capabilities,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement, referring to the military command responsible for the Middle East.
CENTCOM on Sunday had put the figure at more than 800 targets hit since mid-March, saying hundreds of Houthi fighters had been killed as a result.
Hours after that announcement, Houthi-controlled media said US strikes had hit a migrant detention center in the city of Saada, killing at least 68 people, while a United Nations spokesperson later said preliminary information indicated that those killed were migrants.
A US defense official said the military is looking into reports of civilian casualties resulting from its strikes in Yemen.
Attacks by the Iran-backed Houthis have prevented ships from passing through the Suez Canal — a vital route that normally carries about 12 percent of the world’s shipping traffic.
The militants say they are targeting shipping in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, which has been devastated by Israel’s military after a shock Hamas attack in October 2023.
Iran fire contained after blast at key port; 70 killed
TEHRAN: Firefighters have brought under control a blaze at Iran’s main port, following a deadly explosion blamed on negligence, authorities said.
The explosion, heard dozens of kilometers away, hit a dock at the southern port of Shahid Rajaee on Saturday.
At least 70 people were killed and more than 1,000 others suffered injuries in the blast and ensuing fire, which also caused extensive damage, state media reported.
Red Crescent official Mokhtar Salahshour told the channel that the fire had been “contained” and a clean-up was underway.
State television aired live footage on Tuesday showing thick smoke rising from stacked containers.
Iran’s ILNA news agency quoted Hossein Zafari, spokesman for the country’s crisis management organization, as saying the situation had improved significantly since Monday.
However, “the operation and complete extinguishing process may take around 15 to 20 days,” the agency reported.
Iran’s customs authority said port operations had returned to normal, according to the IRNA news agency.
The port of Shahid Rajaee lies near the major coastal city of Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which one-fifth of global oil output passes.
Hormozgan provincial governor Mohammad Ashouri ruled out sabotage.
“The set of hypotheses and investigations carried out during the process indicated that the sabotage theory lacks basis or relevance,” he told state television.
The port’s customs office said the blast may have started in a depot storing hazardous and chemical materials.
Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni said there were “shortcomings, including noncompliance with safety precautions and negligence.”
