Israel has agreed to transfer 5,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccine to the Palestinians to immunize frontline medical workers, Israeli defence minister Benny Gantz’s office said.

It is the first time that Israel has confirmed the transfer of vaccines to the Palestinians, who lag far behind Israel’s aggressive vaccination campaign and have not yet received any vaccines.

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Sir, – President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is reported in The Irish Times as expressing concern about what may happen if there is a spike in Covid-19 cases in his country (“Assad warns of catastrophe”, World, May 5th) but failed to observe in Idlib and northwest Syria he and Russian forces have directly targeted and bombed over 70 hospitals and medical facilities, destroying much of the health system. Doctors in Idlib released research on the same day as Assad’s comments appeared, showing the health system is now so vulnerable that it can only survive a short time if there is a coronavirus outbreak unless the World Health Organisation (WHO) moves urgently to strengthen it.

Idlib is a mirror image of targeted attacks on civilian infrastructure duplicated in so many other parts of the country as the Syrian regime crushed the 2011 peaceful uprising pursuing its “Assad or we burn the country” strategy. The targeted bombing of civilians, destroying hospitals, schools, mosques, markets, and bakeries, and reducing opposition areas to rubble to cause them to flee is the primary reason Syria is now extremely vulnerable to the coronavirus, and no amount of spin by the Syrian regime can disguise that fact. – Yours, etc,

Source: Syria – a looming pandemic catastrophe

Source: https://www.syriahr.com/en/?p=164049&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=syria-a-looming-pandemic-catastrophe

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The new virus has now infected more people in China than were sickened during the 2002-2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak. On Wednesday, the number of cases jumped to 5974, surpassing the 5327 people diagnosed with SARS.

The death toll, which stood at 132 on Wednesday, is lower than the 348 people who died in China from SARS.

Doubts have been raised about the official death toll, however, with claims Chinese authorities have been cremating bodies in secret.

Chinese-language news outlet Initium interviewed people working at local cremation centres in Wuhan, who said bodies were being sent directly from hospitals without being properly identified and added to the official record.

“So there are reasons to remain sceptical about what China has been sharing with the world because while they have been more transparent about certain things related to the virus, they continue to be sketchy and unreliable in other aspects,” said DW News East Asia correspondent William Yang.

Scientists say there are still many questions to be answered about the new virus, including just how easily it spreads and how severe it is.

The World Health Organisation’s emergencies chief told reporters that China was taking “extraordinary measures in the face of an extraordinary challenge” posed by the outbreak.

Dr. Michael Ryan spoke at a news conference after returning from a trip to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other senior government leaders.

He said the epidemic remained centred in the city of Wuhan and in Hubei province, but “information is being updated and is changing by the hour”.

The post Coronavirus: China accused of ‘burning bodies in secret’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Around 20 million Yemenis are food insecure, UN agencies said on Saturday, adding the conflict ravaging the impoverished country was the key driver behind rising hunger levels.

“As many as 20 million Yemenis are food insecure in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” a joint statement by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the children’s fund Unicef and the World Food Programme (WFP) said.

“Already 15.9 million people wake up hungry” in Yemen, it said, citing an analysis by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a food security survey.

According to the IPC – whose analysis is necessary to decide whether to declare famine in countries – the 20 million people facing “severe acute food insecurity” represent 67 per cent of Yemen’s population.

“What the IPC tells us is alarming,” said Lise Grande, UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen.

WFP head David Beasley said the analysis “is an alarm bell that shows hunger is rising”.

“We need a massive increase in aid and sustained access to all areas in Yemen in order to rescue millions of Yemenis. If we don’t, we will lose an entire generation of children to hunger,” he warned.

A WFP spokesman said the organisation aims to scale up its support programme in Yemen from the current level of 7-8 million people to reach 10 million by the end of December and 12 million by end January.

“This scale-up is an ambitious undertaking for WFP, which will demand massive resources both logistical and financial,” said Herve Verhoosel. “WFP has enough food stocks in country for now but will need US$152 million a month to sustain its scale-up into next year.”

The world’s worst humanitarian crisis spiraled in Yemen after a Saudi-led coalition launched an offensive to support the government against Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in March 2015.

It has killed at least 10,000 people, according to the World Health Organisation.

The latest report comes as Yemeni government representatives and a rebel delegation were holding UN-brokered peace talks in Sweden.

The armed conflict was at the top of a list of the “key drivers of food insecurity”, which has been further exacerbated by a protracted economic crisis in the impoverished Gulf Peninsula country.

Yemen’s finances have been devastated by the conflict, with the World Bank reporting the economy has contracted by around 50 per cent since 2015.

Unemployment is running at over 30 per cent and inflation is projected at around 42 per cent, while the majority of state employees are not paid.

A slide in the value of the riyal also has caused food prices in the famine-threatened country to soar.

“A large proportion of the population, even in more stable areas, cannot access basic food commodities because food prices have jumped by 150 per cent compared to pre-crisis levels,” the statement said.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: 20 million at risk of famine in Yemen

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Source: https://www.scmp.com/news/world/middle-east/article/2177094/yemen-20-million-people-are-risk-famine-fighting-continues

[Disclaimer]

The post In Yemen, 20 million people are at risk of famine as fighting continues first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The UN last week described the civil conflict in Yemen as an “absurd” war in which all parties, including a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia, were showing a “complete disregard for human life.”

“This absurd war…has only resulted in the destruction of the country and the incommensurate suffering of its people, who are being punished as part of a futile military campaign by both sides,” McGoldrick added.

McGoldrick cited two air raids by the Saudi-led Arab coalition on December 26 that together claimed scores of civilian lives.

The first killed 54 civilians, including eight children, at a “crowded popular market” in Taez province, and the second, in the Red Sea province of Hodeida, killed 14 people from the same family, the statement said.

On 5 December, Yemen’s former president and rebel leader Ali Abdullah Saleh was assassinated in the area of Khawlan in the capital Sanaa as he was fleeing Houthi rebels. His envoy was ambushed with an RPG rocket and he was then reportedly assassinated by gunfire. Some of his aides were killed, while others were injured.

Over the past 33 months, the situation on the ground in Yemen has witnessed many developments, other than the killing of Saleh, such as the spread of Cholera, famine, and drought. Another 41 civilians had been killed in other fighting in Yemen in the past 10 days, according to the statement.

“I remind all parties to the conflict, including the Saudi-led coalition, of their obligations under International Humanitarian Law to spare civilians and civilian infrastructure and to always distinguish between civilian and military objects,” McGoldrick said.

He said that the conflict in Yemen has no military solution and that negotiations are necessary to resolve it.

Yemen, which was plunged into a brutal civil war in March 2015, has reached another dark milestone. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced last Thursday that more than one million people in the Arabian Peninsula country are now affected by cholera.

In November, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that almost 2,200 people had already died from the waterborne disease. The problem has been exacerbated by worsening hygiene and sanitation conditions in the country.

The Red Cross emphasised that cholera is not the only problem plaguing the county’s civilian population, adding that 80% of Yemenis lack access to food, fuel, clean drinking water, and healthcare. Although the number of cholera cases registered each week has gone down over the past three months, WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said, “the epidemic is not yet over, and more concerted efforts should be deployed to ensure its control in the immediate term and the prevention of future outbreaks.”

Yemen relies heavily on food and fuel imports and the fuel is used to distribute food throughout the country and to keep electricity running. Water supply is also affected since the necessary installations to pump water and adequately treat it are out of order due to the fuel shortage, thus making waterborne diseases a major concern.

However, in parallel the coalition’s aggression against Houthi rebels, there are the ballistic missiles which continue to be fired at Saudi lands leading to more retaliation on Yemeni lands. On 19 December, a missile was fired at the Yamama Palace in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. On the same day, the Saudi-led coalition said it had intercepted the ballistic missile south of the capital. The attack was confirmed by a spokesperson for the Houthi movement, who said that a ballistic missile had targeted the royal court, where they claimed a meeting of Saudi leaders was taking place that Tuesday.

Yemen has devolved into economic instability and political turmoil since Saleh’s forced resignation in 2012, after Yemen’s Arab Spring uprising. The political crisis resulted in the house arrest of President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who at the time fled to the south and rescinded his resignation. He is currently in self-imposed exile in Saudi Arabia.

Source: https://dailynewsegypt.com/2018/01/02/post-saleh-guerrilla-conflicts-leave-scores-civilians-dead/

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