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UN: Middle East wars hit 13 million schoolchildren

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More than 8,850 schools no longer usable due to violence in six Middle East nations and territories, UNICEF reports.

In the Gaza Strip at least 281 schools had been damaged, and eight 'completely destroyed', the UN said [Reuters]

In the Gaza Strip at least 281 schools had been damaged, and eight ‘completely destroyed’, the UN said [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

More than 13 million children are being denied an education due to conflicts in the Middle East, the UN has said, warning “the hopes of a generation” would be dashed if they cannot return to classrooms.

In a report on the impact of conflict on education in six countries and territories across the region, the UN’s children fund UNICEF on Thursday said more than 8,850 schools were no longer usable due to violence.

It detailed cases of students and teachers coming under direct fire, classrooms used as makeshift bomb shelters and children having to cross active front-lines just to take their exams.

“The destructive impact of conflict is being felt by children right across the region,” Peter Salama, regional director for UNICEF in the Middle East and North Africa, told AFP news agency.

“It’s not just the physical damage being done to schools, but the despair felt by a generation of schoolchildren who see their hopes and futures shattered.”

Last year alone, UNICEF documented 214 attacks on schools in Syria, Iraq, Libya, the Palestinian territories, Sudan, and Yemen.

In Syria, it said education was paying a “massive price” after four-and-a-half years of conflict.

One in four schools have been closed since the conflict erupted, causing more than two million children to drop out and putting close to half a million in danger of losing their schooling.

In addition, more than 52,000 teachers have left their posts, saddling the country’s crumbling education system with an acute skills shortage.

“Even those Syrian teachers who have ended up as refugees in other countries have faced obstacles which prevent them from working,” the report said.

‘School no longer safe’

UNICEF said one of the worst direct attacks on a school in the region came in Yemen, where 13 staff and four children were killed in an assault on a teachers’ office in the western city of Amran.

“The killing, abduction and arbitrary arrest of students, teachers and education personnel have become commonplace” in the region, the report said.

Hundreds of schools and colleges have been closed since March, when a Saudi-led coalition launched air strikes on Houthi rebels who had seized the capital Sanaa and several parts of the country.

In the embattled Gaza Strip, which saw a 51-day war last year between Hamas and Israel kill about 2,200 Palestinians and 73 on the Israeli side, the UN said at least 281 schools had been damaged, and eight “completely destroyed”.

“My children were injured in a school. They saw people injured with missing hands or legs, with wounded faces and eyes,” the report quoted Gaza mother-of-two Niveen as saying.

“They no longer see school as a safe place.”

‘Generation in the balance’

UNICEF said that violence in Iraq, where pro-government forces are battling the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, has had a severe impact on the schooling of at least 950,000 children.

It detailed scenes among the 1,200 schools in Iraqi host communities that have been turned into shelters for those displaced by violence, with up to nine families per classroom forced to prepare meals in courtyards.

Conflict has also affected child learning in Libya – still reeling from the 2011 ouster of longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi – with more than half of those displaced in the chaos reporting that their children cannot attend classes.

In the second city of Benghazi alone, the UN said just 65 of 239 schools are still functioning.

In Sudan, the agency said high numbers of internally displaced families fleeing violence in Darfur and South Kordofan states was putting untenable strain on the country’s creaking school infrastructure.

UNICEF called for better informal education services in countries affected by school closures and for donor nations to prioritise education funding throughout the Middle East.

“With more than 13 million children already driven from classrooms by conflict, it is no exaggeration to say that the education prospects of a generation of children are in the balance,” it said.

UN: Gaza may be uninhabitable by 2020 on current trends

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New report reveals impact of 2014 Israel war on strip, which sent “almost all of the population into destitution”.

Gaza

by Al Jazeera

Gaza could be “uninhabitable” in less than five years if current economic trends continue, according to a new United Nations report.

The report released on Tuesday by the UN Conference on Trade and Development points to the eight-year economic blockade of Gaza as well as the three wars there over the past six years.

Last year’s Israeli war on Gaza displaced half a million people and left parts of the strip destroyed.

The war “has effectively eliminated what was left of the middle class, sending almost all of the population into destitution and dependence on international humanitarian aid,” the new report says.

Gaza’s GDP dropped 15 percent last year, and unemployment reached a record high of 44 percent. Seventy-two percent of households are food insecure.

The wars have shattered Gaza’s ability to export and produce for the domestic market and left no time for reconstruction, the report says. It notes that Gaza’s “de-development,” or development in reverse, has been accelerated.

Israel and Egypt have maintained a blockade of Gaza since the armed group Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007.

“The humanitarian catastrophe is man-made. The answer is only through are man-made policies,” Hamdi Shaqqura, the deputy director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, told Al Jazeera.

Shaqqura said that donations from the international community have been “very useful”, but need to be coupled with “real political policies” to effectively help Gaza.

“The answer to Gaza is not dumping money into it. We have great potentials in Gaza for economic policies. What hinder economic development is merely Israeli policies, the closure (blockade) and other restrictions imposed on Gaza.”

A year after the war on Gaza, less than 2 percent of the required materials have been allowed into Gaza.

The report comes as Egyptian military bulldozers press ahead with a project that effectively would fill Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip with water and flood the last remaining cross-border underground smuggling tunnels, which have brought both commercial items and weapons into Gaza.

The report calls the economic prospects for 2015 for the Palestinian territories “bleak” because of the unstable political situation, reduced aid and the slow pace of reconstruction.

Yemen hospitals facing closures as fighting rages

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Major hospitals in Sanaa and Taiz facing closure due supply shortages as fighting rages, NGOs say.

More than 15.2 million people are lacking access to basic healthcare across Yemen, according to Save the Children [EPA]

More than 15.2 million people are lacking access to basic healthcare across Yemen, according to Save the Children [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

Major hospitals in Yemen have been struggling to function due to a supply shortages caused by the increased fighting between Houthi rebels and forces loyal to the exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The main hospital in rebel-held capital, Sanaa, is on the verge of shutting down due to limited access to basic medicines and equipments caused by blockade imposed by pro-Hadi fighters, while hospitals in Taiz were under siege by Houthi rebels.

Save the Children said Al-Sabeen Hospital – that caters to children and pregnant women in Sanaa – could shut its doors on Tuesday over critical fuel shortages and a lack of medical supplies.

The hospital, reliant on the Red Sea port of Hodeida for 90 percent of its imports, serves an estimated three million people, the organisation said in a statement.

“The hospital has entirely run out of IV fluid, anaesthetic, blood transfusion tests, Valium to treat seizures and ready-prepared therapeutic food for severely malnourished children,” the statement said citing the hospital’s deputy manager Halel al-Bahri.

Basic healthcare

In Taiz, Yemen’s third city, two major hospitals have already closed due to a supply shortage caused by a blockade imposed by Houthi fighters, Médecins Sans Frontières or Doctors without Borders (MSF) said.

“Yemen International Hospital and the military hospital, the biggest in Taiz, have shut their doors because the rebels refused to allow us to deliver drugs and medical supplies,” Salah Ibrahim Dongu’du, a project coordinator at MSF, told Al Jazeera over phone.

“Safwa Hospital is closing today, and Rawda hospital can only accept emergency cases,” he said. “The medical situation in Taiz is not good. It is catastrophic.”

Dongu’du said that there are more than 1,400 people in need of immediate medical help in the besieged city.

The Saudi-led coalition has mounted an air campaign against Iran-backed Houthi rebels late March in support of the exiled President Hadi.

Across Yemen, 15.2 million people are lacking access to basic healthcare, an increase of 40 percent since March, Save the Children warned.

More than half a million children are expected to suffer severe acute malnutrition this year, and there has been a 150 percent increase in hospital admissions for malnutrition since March, it said.

Al Jazeera staff sentenced to jail in Egypt

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Condemnation of verdict as Egypt court finds Baher Mohamed, Mohamed Fahmy, and Peter Greste guilty in delayed trial.

Al Jazeera retrial

by Al Jazeera

A Cairo court has sentenced three Al Jazeera journalists to three years in jail after finding them guilty of “aiding a terrorist organisation”.

Egyptian Baher Mohamed, Canadian Mohamed Fahmy and Australian Peter Greste were all handed three-year jail sentences when the court delivered the verdict on Saturday, sparking worldwide outrage.

Mohamed was sentenced to an additional six months for possession of a spent bullet casing.

The journalists had been initially found guilty in June 2014 of aiding a “terrorist organisation”, a reference to the Muslim Brotherhood, which was outlawed in Egypt after the army overthrew President Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

Judge Hassan Farid, in his ruling on Saturday, said he sentenced the men to prison at least partly because they had not registered with the country’s journalist “syndicate”.

He also said the men brought in equipment without security officials’ approval, had broadcast “false news” on Al Jazeera and used a hotel as a broadcasting point without permission.

The verdict was immediately condemned by Al Jazeera Media Network’s Acting Director General Dr Mostefa Souag, who said: “Today’s verdict defies logic and common sense. Our colleagues Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy will now have to return to prison, and Peter Greste is sentenced in absentia.

“The whole case has been heavily politicised and has not been conducted in a free and fair manner.”

Dr Souag continued, “There is no evidence proving that our colleagues in any way fabricated news or aided and abetted terrorist organisations, and at no point during the long drawn out retrial did any of the unfounded allegations stand up to scrutiny.

“A report issued by a technical committee assigned by the court in Egypt contradicted the accusations made by the public prosecutor and stated in its report that the seized videos were not fabricated.

“Baher, Peter and Mohamed have been sentenced despite the fact that not a shred of evidence was found to support the extraordinary and false charges against them.

“Today’s verdict is yet another deliberate attack on press freedom. It is a dark day for the Egyptian judiciary; rather than defend liberties and a free and fair media, they have compromised their independence for political reasons.”

Speaking from Sydney, Greste labelled the verdict “outrageous”.

“We did nothing wrong. The court presented no evidence. For us to be convicted as terrorists is outrageous. It can only be a political verdict. This is unethical,” Greste said.

Al Jazeera’s next step is to file an appeal before the Court of Cassation. Such an appeal should be filed within 60 days.

In January, an appeals court ordered a retrial, saying the initial verdict lacked evidence against the three journalists working for the Doha-based network’s English channel.

The journalists and Al Jazeera have vigorously denied the accusations during the trial.

Ten previous sessions in the court had all been adjourned.

Greste has already been deported to his native Australia under a law allowing the transfer of foreigners on trial to their home countries, but he was retried in absentia.

Fahmy and Mohamed were on bail ahead of the verdict after spending more than 400 days in detention.

The Cairo court said on Saturday that the previous time spent in prison will be accounted for as time served.

Fahmy renounced his Egyptian nationality hoping he too would be deported.

Canadian Minister of State Lynne Yelich issued a statement after Saturday’s verdict calling on Egyptian authorities to release Fahmy.

“Canada is disappointed with Mohamed Fahmy’s conviction today. ‎This decision severely undermines confidence in the rule of law in Egypt,” Yelich said.

“The government of Canada continues to call on the Egyptian government to use all tools at its disposal to resolve Mr Fahmy’s case and allow his immediate return to Canada.”

The three men have received support from governments, media organisations and rights groups from around the world.

About 200 feared dead in Libya refugee boat disaster

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Officials say 105 dead and at least 100 missing after boat sinks off Libyan coast in latest Mediterranean disaster.

boat-libya

by Al Jazeera

At least 105 people have been killed and more than one hundred others are still missing after a boat, reportedly packed with refugees bound for Italy, capsized and sunk off the Libyan coast.

Hussein Asheini, the head of Libya’s Red Crescent in Zuwara, told the Associated Press news agency that 105 bodies had been recovered. Nearly 200 others had been rescued, the organisation said.

A security official in Zuwarah, a town in the North African nation’s west from where the overcrowded boat had set off, said that there were about 400 people on board.

The UNHCR, the UN Agency for refugees, in a statement, released on Friday, said there were about 500 people on board.

Sources told Al Jazeera that many of the dead had been trapped in the cargo hold when the boat capsized on Thursday.

The people on board had come from sub-Saharan Africa, Pakistan, Syria, Morocco, and Bangladesh, the Libyan security official said.

The UNHCR also announced on Friday that more than 300,000 refugees and migrants had risked their lives crossing the Mediterranean to Europe in the first nine months of 2015 alone.

About 2,500 people had died while making the perilous journey, the UNHCR said.

“This represents a large increase from last year, when around 219,000 people crossed the Mediterranean during the whole of 2014,” the UN said.

Zuwarah, Libya’s most western town located near the Tunisian border, is a major launchpad for smugglers moving refugees to Italy.

Libya has turned into a transit route for people fleeing conflict and poverty to make it to Europe.

Cross-border smuggler networks exploit the country’s lawlessness and chaos to bring Syrians into Libya via Egypt or nationals of sub-Saharan countries via Niger, Sudan, and Chad.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Anas El Gomati, who founded the Tripoli-based think-tank The Sadeq Institute, said Libya’s government does not feel it should be helping pay the bill to deal with refugees making their way to Europe as it is facing continued violence across the country.

“Libya’s security approach – and security apparatus – is now completely disorganised and in chaos,” he said.

“You have hundreds of different groups that are operating on the ground now, some of them taking advantage of a very, very chaotic situation – one of civil war.”

In a separate incident on Thursday, 71 refugees were found dead in a parked lorry on a highway in Austria near the Hungarian border on Thursday.

The refrigerated vehicle was found by an Austrian motorway patrol with fluids from the decomposing bodies seeping from its back door.

At a Geneva briefing, the UNHCR said that in another incident on Thursday, 51 people suffocated in the hold of a boat.

Survivors said they had been beaten to force them into the hold and then had to pay money to smugglers just to come out to breathe.

One man, an Iraqi orthopaedic surgeon, said he had paid 3,000 euros ($3,400) to come up on to the top deck with his wife and two-year-old son.

Last week, 49 people died in another boat’s hold after inhaling poisonous fumes, and on Wednesday 21 people are thought to have died after a dinghy with 145 on board got into difficulty, UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.

Saudi troops enter northern Yemen after Houthi clashes

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Saudi commanders insist incursion into northern Yemen is temporary, as troops take up positions overlooking Jizan.

yemen-airstrike

by Al Jazeera

Saudi Arabian troops have crossed into northern Yemen for the first time since the conflict with Houthi rebels began in March.

Footage published on Wednesday showed soldiers taking positions in a mountainous area overlooking the southern Saudi province of Jizan.

Houthi shelling and rocket attacks on the border have killed dozens of Saudi soldiers, including a general on Sunday.

Saudi commanders insist the incursions are temporary.

A Saudi-led coalition has launched air strikes at rebel positions in Yemen but the the Houthis and their allies, soldiers loyal to the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, insist they are still a capable fighting force.

The Houthis have posted video online of what they say are rebel commandos storming a Saudi border post.

The video shows the fighters capturing the building after heavy fighting and blowing up military vehicles, only to withdraw when Saudi fighter jets launched an air raid in the area.

In July, Popular Resistance fighters fighting on the side of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s forces expelled the Houthis and their allies from the southern port city of Aden, whose capture by the rebels sparked the aerial campaign by the Arab coalition.

More than 4,300 people have been killed in the conflict in Yemen, according to the UN, almost half of those civilians.

At least 50 people have died in Houthi attacks on positions inside Saudi Arabia.

‘You Stink’: Beirut protesters now calling for revolution

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Thousands of protesters pour into Lebanese capital’s streets demanding government’s resignation.

Lebanese activists shout 'Revolution! Revolution!' as they are sprayed by riot police using water cannons Sunday evening in Beirut, Lebanon, Aug. 23, 2015. (AP photo)

Lebanese activists shout ‘Revolution! Revolution!’ as they are sprayed by riot police using water cannons Sunday evening in Beirut, Lebanon, Aug. 23, 2015. (AP photo)

by Common Dreams

Tens of thousands anti-government protesters clashed with police in central Beirut on Sunday evening just hours after Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam hinted he might step down following violence triggered by the month-long ‘You Stink‘ trash protests.

Gunfire was heard as government riot police opened fire in an apparent effort to drive protesters away from central Beirut government offices, witnesses said.

Chants of “Revolution! Revolution!” were ringing through the crowds as police attacked Sunday night.

Thousands of protesters had camped overnight Saturday in the capital’s Riad al-Solh square waiting for Prime Minister Tammam Salam’s response to Saturday’s police violence.

Al-Jazeera reports that in a televised address Sunday morning, Salam said members of the security forces will be held accountable for the violence against protesters . Salam also called on an emergency parliament session on Thursday to deal with the country’s ongoing political crisis. “I have been, like many other fellow Lebanese, patient enough, but yesterday’s outcry should not be ignored,” he said. “I was never in this for a position in government, I am one of you. I am with the people. Do not pit this conflict [as] one camp against the other. Target all the politicians.”

Angered by Salam’s speech, the protesters chanted: “The people want the fall of the regime”.

Al Jazeera’s Jamal Elshayyal, reporting from Beirut, said the protests had drawn people from across Lebanon’s political divide.

“This is very much a grassroots movement that has come out on to the streets…there seems to be a very significant movement forming here in Beirut. “(The protests) were triggered by the trash crisis but the people we’ve been speaking to say that this is the straw that broke the camel’s back…they point to power shortages, water shortages, inherent corruption within the state.”


Deadly blast hits Afghan capital Kabul

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At least three people killed and 18 wounded in blast near US embassy and ISAF headquarters.

Kabul

by Al Jazeera

An explosion in the diplomatic district of Afghanistan’s capital Kabul has killed three people and wounded 18, according to the Afghan Ministry of Public Health.

The blast took place near the US embassy and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters, witnesses said.

There was no immediate confirmation of what caused the blast on Saturday afternoon, but Afghan users on Twitter said alarms could be heard ringing in the area.

There have been a number of attacks in the city within the past month.

At least four people were killed at Kabul airport on August 10 and dozens of civilians were killed in multiple suicide attacks a week earlier.

Pakistan kills 43 suspected Taliban members in airstrikes

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A Pakistani F-16 fighter jet performs in-flight maneuvers. (AFP/File)

A Pakistani F-16 fighter jet performs in-flight maneuvers. (AFP/File)

by Andolu Ajansi

Pakistan’s army has claimed to have killed 43 suspected Taliban fighters in the North Waziristan tribal area on Thursday.

The army’s media wing Inter Services Public Relations said air strikes hit the fighters in the Gharala Mae and Shawal valley areas near the Afghanistan border.

More than 160 fighters have been killed in five consecutive days of strikes by the army, which followed the killing of a provincial official in the northeastern Punjab province in a suicide attack on Sunday.

North Waziristan – one of the seven semi-autonomous tribal regions in Pakistan – has been a battleground between the army and the Taliban since June 2014 following a full-scale military onslaught that has killed around 3,000 suspected militants.

The figures cannot be independently verified as the army has declared the area off-limits to journalists.

Over 350 soldiers have also lost their lives in landmine blasts and clashes with the Taliban during this period and the military operation has displaced a million tribesmen from North Waziristan.

Children bearing brunt of war in Yemen, UNICEF says

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Nearly 400 children killed and 377 children recruited as child soldiers since the Saudi-led bombing began in March.

At least 1,950 civilians have been killed in the fighting and 1.3 million others have fled their homes [UNICEF]

At least 1,950 civilians have been killed in the fighting and 1.3 million others have fled their homes [UNICEF]

by Al Jazeera

The conflict in Yemen has killed nearly 400 children since the end of March, and a similar number of children have been recruited by armed groups, according to a new report by the UN children’s agency.

UNICEF’s report released on Wednesday, says that 398 children have been killed and 377 others have been recruited to fight since the Saudi-led coalition began airstrikes in Yemen.

“This conflict is a particular tragedy for Yemeni children,” Julien Harneis, UNICEF Representative in Yemen, said.

“Children are being killed by bombs or bullets and those that survive face the growing threat of disease and malnutrition. This cannot be allowed to continue,” he added.

The UN said that as devastating as the conflict is for the lives of children, it will have terrifying consequences for their future.

On Wednesday, human rights watch dog, Amnesty International, said that all sides fighting in Yemen have left a “trail of civilian death and destruction” in the conflict, killing scores of innocent people in what could amount to war crimes.

The London-based rights group said the violence has been particularly deadly in the southern city of Aden and in Taiz, with dozens of children among those killed.

Yemen’s conflict pits the Houthis and troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh against forces including southern separatists, tribal fighters and troops loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who is in exile in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis are leading a US-backed Arab coalition that is carrying out air strikes against Houthi fighters since March.

Civilian death toll

Overall, the UN human rights office said on Tuesday, at least 1,950 civilians have been killed in the fighting and 1,3 million others have fled their homes.

The UN and aid groups have called repeatedly for ways to get food, fuel, medicine and other supplies into Yemen, but tight restrictions imposed by the coalition on air and sea transport remain in place, while Yemen’s exiled government accuses the Houthis of hijacking aid.

Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world, and its population relies on imports for about 90 percent of its supplies. Attempts at UN-brokered humanitarian pauses to bring in aid have failed.

The new UNICEF report says about 10 million children, or half of the country’s population, need urgent humanitarian assistance.

It also says more than half a million pregnant women in Yemen’s hardest-hit areas are at higher risk for birth or pregnancy complications because they can’t get to medical facilities.

Across the country, nearly 10 million children – 80 percent of the country’s under-18 population – are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance [UNICEF]

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