UNITED NATIONS: Reports of Syrian health care facilities filling up and increasing death notices and burials appear to indicate that actual coronavirus cases in the war-torn country “far exceed official figures” confirmed by the government, a senior UN humanitarian official said Thursday.
Syria has so far reported more than 2,500 cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus, including 100 deaths.
However, UN Assistant Secretary-General for humanitarian affairs Ramesh Rajasingham told the UN Security Council that “rising patient numbers are adding pressure to the fragile health system” in Syria, now in its 10th year of war.
Many people “are reluctant to seek care at medical facilities, leading to more severe complications when they do arrive,” he said, adding that “health workers still lack sufficient personal protective equipment and associated supplies.”
Of the virus cases confirmed by the Syrian Ministry of Health, Rajasingham said, “the majority cannot be traced to a known source.” He said several health facilities briefly suspended operations this month because of capacity issues and staff becoming infected by the coronavirus.
In the Al Hol camp in northeast Syria, where 65,000 mainly women and children connected to Daesh fighters are detained, Rajasingham said “12 health facilities had to suspend operations this month due to staff becoming infected, having to self-isolate, or due to lack of personal protective equipment.”
“Both field hospitals at the camp have since resumed operations,” he said.
Germany and Belgium, who are in charge of Syrian humanitarian issues in the Security Council, said in a joint statement that “the spread of COVID-19 across the country is increasing exponentially.”
“Testing capacities remain very low, so most cases may go unnoticed,” they said. “Numbers we hear may only represent the tip of the iceberg.”
They also warned that “the destruction of health facilities and the shortage of health workers dramatically imperil any response.”
Germany and Belgium urged greater humanitarian access, sharply criticizing demands by Syrian ally Russia that led to the closing of the Al Yaroubiya crossing from Iraq to northeast Syria in January and last month’s closing of the Bab Al-Salam crossing point from Turkey to northwest Syria.
“What is needed is distribution to all people and health care facilities – and not the regime deciding who is ‘worthy of receiving aid’ and who is not,” they said. “The burden of responsibility lies on those countries that have systematically limited humanitarian access” to Syria.
US political coordinator Rodney Hunter expressed concern at reports of “a massive coronavirus outbreak in the Damascus region and elsewhere in regime-controlled areas.”
He called on Syrian authorities to grant access to the UN and international organizations to collect statistics and determine the scale of the pandemic in the country, saying so far there has been “no transparency” by the government.
“The coronavirus is absolutely exacerbating the Syrian humanitarian crisis,” he said.
Hunter said the United States is “deeply saddened” by reports from the UN children’s agency UNICEF earlier this month that eight children under the age of five died in the Al Hol camp in less than a week.
“We understand that four of those deaths were caused by malnutrition-related complications,” he said.
“These deaths were completely preventable if the thousands of camp inhabitants still received the life-saving combination” of deliveries from Damascus across conflict lines and from Iraq through the Al Yaroubiya crossing, Hunter said.
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia expressed confidence that once logistics were “adjusted,” the UN would be able to increase supplies through the one remaining border crossing from Turkey at Bab Al-Hawa.
He pointed to a recent article in the British medical journal, “The Lancet,” which said that the “Syrian health system, already fractured by years of conflict, is being further destroyed by sanctions.”
Entitled “EU guidance impedes humanitarian action to prevent COVID-19 in Syria,” it says: “Widespread cooperation to ensure efficient delivery of medicines and equipment to combat COVID-19 in Syria is lacking.”
Nebenzia also pointed to an Aug. 25 statement by three key foreign powers in the Syrian conflict — Iran and Russia, which support Syrian President Bashar Assad, and Turkey, which backs the opposition — on the sidelines of a meeting in Geneva of government and opposition figures on drafting a new constitution for the country.
Those three countries rejected all unilateral sanctions, Nebenzia said.
He denounced the “hypocrisy” and “double standards” of Security Council members that continue to support sanctions against Syria.
UN official: COVID-19 cases likely far higher than Syria says
https://arab.news/vyq9d
UN official: COVID-19 cases likely far higher than Syria says
- Syria has so far reported more than 2,500 cases of COVID-19
- “Rising patient numbers are adding pressure to the fragile health system” in Syria, Rajasingham said
Canadian man shot dead in Egypt, says security source
- Security sources made no link between the shooting and the dead man’s ethnic background
- A statement claiming the killing by a previously unknown group called “Liberation Vanguards” was circulating on social media
CAIRO: A Canadian man “of Jewish Israeli descent” has been shot dead during a robbery in the Egyptian city of Alexandria and authorities are investigating the incident as a criminal case, a security source said late on Tuesday.
The security source told Reuters the man had been killed “with the motive of robbery.” The source made no link between the shooting and the dead man’s ethnic background.
The interior ministry confirmed the shooting and said the man had been a permanent resident of Egypt. Neither the ministry nor the source gave any further details.
A statement claiming the killing by a previously unknown group called “Liberation Vanguards” was circulating on social media, but security sources said they had no information on the existence of such a group or whether it had been involved in the incident.
The shooting happened on Tuesday as Israeli forces seized the main border crossing between Gaza and Egypt in Rafah, where more than one million displaced Palestinians have sought shelter during Israel’s seven-month-old offensive.
One day after the war in Gaza began last October following an attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel, two Israeli tourists and their Egyptian guide were shot dead in Alexandria, in the first such attack on Israelis in Egypt in decades.
A policeman who said he had “lost control” was placed in custody regarding that incident.
Israel pounds Gaza as truce talks resume in Cairo
- AlQahera News: ‘Truce negotiations have resumed in Cairo today with all sides present’
- Moscow so far sees no prospect for a peace settlement in Gaza or the wider Middle East
RAFAH, Palestinian Territories: Israel bombarded the overcrowded Gaza city of Rafah, where it has launched a ground incursion, as talks resumed Wednesday in Cairo aimed at agreeing the terms of a truce in the seven-month war.
Despite international objections, Israel sent tanks into Rafah on Tuesday and seized the nearby crossing into Egypt that is the main conduit for aid into the besieged Palestinian territory.
The White House condemned the interruption to humanitarian deliveries, with a senior US official later revealing Washington had paused a shipment of bombs last week after Israel failed to address US concerns over its Rafah plans.
The Israeli military said hours later it was reopening another major aid crossing into Gaza, Kerem Shalom, as well as the Erez crossing.
But the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said the Kerem Shalom crossing — which Israel shut after a rocket attack killed four soldiers on Sunday — remained closed.
It came after a night of heavy Israeli strikes and shelling across Gaza. AFPTV footage showed Palestinians scrambling in the dark to pull survivors, bloodied and caked in dust, out from under the rubble of a Rafah building.
Russia said on Wednesday that the war in Gaza was escalating due to Israel’s incursion into Rafah and that Moscow so far saw no prospect for a peace settlement in Gaza or the wider Middle East.
“An additional destabilizing factor, including for the entire region, was the launch of an Israeli military ground operation in Rafah,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters.
“About one and a half million Palestinian civilians are concentrated there. In this regard, we demand strict compliance with the provisions of international humanitarian law.”
Speaking more broadly about efforts to find a lasting settlement in the Middle East, Zakharova said: “I would like to call it a settlement, but, alas, it is far from a settlement.”
“There are no prospects for resolving the situation in the Gaza Strip. On the contrary, the situation in the conflict zone is escalating daily.”
“We are living in Rafah in extreme fear and endless anxiety as the occupation army keeps firing artillery shells indiscriminately,” said Muhanad Ahmad Qishta, 29.
“Rafah is a witnessing a very large displacement, as places the Israeli army claims to be safe are also being bombed,” he said.
The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel in response vowed to crush Hamas and launched a military offensive that has killed at least 34,789 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Militants also took around 250 people hostage, of whom Israel estimates 128 remain in Gaza, including 36 who are believed to be dead.
Talks aimed at agreeing a ceasefire resumed in Cairo on Wednesday “in the presence of all parties,” Egyptian media reported.
A senior Hamas official said the latest round of negotiations would be “decisive.”
“The resistance insists on the rightful demands of its people and will not give up any of our people’s rights,” he said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the negotiations.
The official had previously warned it would be Israel’s “last chance” to free the scores of hostages still in militants’ hands.
Mediators have failed to broker a new truce since a week-long ceasefire in November saw 105 hostages freed, the Israelis among them in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Mediator Qatar urges international community to prevent Rafah ‘genocide’
- Israel struck targets in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after seizing the main border crossing with Egypt
- African Union condemns the Israeli military’s moves into southern Gaza’s Rafah
DOHA: Qatar called on the international community on Wednesday to prevent a “genocide” in Rafah following Israel’s seizure of the Gaza city’s crossing with Egypt and threats of a wider assault.
In a statement the Gulf state, which has been mediating between Israel and militant group Hamas, appealed “for urgent international action to prevent the city from being invaded and a crime of genocide being committed.”
Israel struck targets in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after seizing the main border crossing with Egypt. Israel has vowed for weeks to launch a ground incursion into Rafah, despite a clamour of international objection.
The attacks on the southern city, which is packed with displaced civilians, came as negotiators and mediators met in Cairo to try to hammer out a hostage-release and truce deal in the seven-month war.
Qatar, which has hosted Hamas’s political office in Doha since 2012, has been engaged — along with Egypt and the United States — in months of behind-the-scenes mediation between Israel and the Palestinian group.
The African Union condemned Wednesday the Israeli military’s moves into southern Gaza’s Rafah, calling for the international community to stop “this deadly escalation” of the war.
AU Commission chief Moussa Faki Mahamat “firmly condemns the extension of this war to the Rafah crossing,” said a statement after Israeli tanks captured the key corridor for humanitarian aid into the besieged Palestinian territory.
Faki “expresses his extreme concern at the war undertaken by Israel in Gaza which results, at every moment, in massive deaths and systematic destruction of the conditions of human life,” the statement said.
“He calls on the entire international community to effectively coordinate collective action to stop this deadly escalation.”
Israel says it has reopened Kerem Shalom border crossing for Gaza aid
- Erez border crossing between Israel and northern Gaza is also open for aid deliveries into the Palestinian territory
JERUSALEM: Israel said it reopened the Kerem Shalom border crossing to humanitarian aid for Gaza Wednesday, four days after closing it in response to a rocket attack that killed four soldiers.
“Trucks from Egypt carrying humanitarian aid, including food, water, shelter equipment, medicine and medical equipment donated by the international community are already arriving at the crossing,” the army said in a joint statement with COGAT, the defense ministry body that oversees Palestinian civil affairs.
The supplies will be transferred to the Gaza side of the crossing after undergoing inspection, it added.
The statement said the Erez border crossing between Israel and northern Gaza is also open for aid deliveries into the Palestinian territory.
The Kerem Shalom crossing was closed after a Hamas rocket attack killed four soldiers and wounded more than a dozen on Sunday.
On Tuesday, Israeli troops seized control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt after launching an incursion into the eastern sector of the city.
The United Nations and Israel’s staunchest ally the United States both condemned the closure of the two crossings which are a lifeline for civilians facing looming famine.
‘A blessing’: Rains refill Iraq’s drought-hit reservoirs
- The last time Darbandikhan was full was in 2019
- Iraq is considered by the United Nations to be one of the five countries most vulnerable to some impacts of climate change
Darbandikhan: The reservoir behind the massive Darbandikhan dam, tucked between the rolling mountains of northeastern Iraq, is almost full again after four successive years of drought and severe water shortages.
Iraqi officials say recent rainfall has refilled some of the water-scarce country’s main reservoirs, taking levels to a record since 2019.
“The dam’s storage capacity is three million cubic meters (106 million cubic feet). Today, with the available reserves, the dam is only missing 25 centimeters (10 inches) of water to be considered full,” Saman Ismail, director of the Darbandikhan facility, told AFP on Sunday.
Built on the River Sirwan, the dam is located south of the city of Sulaimaniyah in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region.
“In the coming days, we will be able to say that it’s full,” said Ismail, with the water just a few meters below the road running along the edge of the basin.
The last time Darbandikhan was full was in 2019, and since then “we’ve only had years of drought and shortages,” said Ismail.
He cited “climate change in the region” as a reason, “but also dam construction beyond Kurdistan’s borders.”
The central government in Baghdad says upstream dams built in neighboring Iran and Turkiye have heavily reduced water flow in Iraq’s rivers, on top of rising temperatures and irregular rainfall.
This winter, however, bountiful rains have helped to ease shortages in Iraq, considered by the United Nations to be one of the five countries most vulnerable to some impacts of climate change.
In Iraq, rich in oil but where infrastructure is often run-down, torrential rains have also flooded the streets of Kurdistan’s regional capital Irbil.
Four hikers died last week in floods in Kurdistan, and in Diyala, a rural province in central Iraq, houses were destroyed.
Ali Radi Thamer, director of the dam authority at Iraq’s water resources ministry, said that most of the country’s six biggest dams have experienced a rise in water levels.
At the Mosul dam, the largest reservoir with a capacity of about 11 billion cubic meters, “the storage level is very good, we have benefitted from the rains and the floods,” said Thamer.
Last summer, he added, Iraq’s “water reserves... reached a historic low.”
“The reserves available today will have positive effects for all sectors,” Thamer said, including agriculture and treatment plants that produce potable water, as well as watering southern Iraq’s fabled marshes that have dried up in recent years.
He cautioned that while 2019 saw “a sharp increase in water reserves,” it was followed by “four successive dry seasons.”
Water has been a major issue in Iraq, a country of 43 million people that faces a serious environmental crisis from worsening climate change, with temperatures frequently hitting 50 degrees Celsius in summer.
“Sure, today we have rain and floods, water reserves that have relatively improved, but this does not mean the end of drought,” Thamer said.
About five kilometers (three miles) south of Darbandikhan, terraces near a small riverside tourist establishment are submerged in water.
But owner Aland Salah prefers to see the glass half full.
“The water of the Sirwan river is a blessing,” he told AFP.
“When the flow increases, the area grows in beauty.
“We have some damage, but we will keep working.”
