Category: Humanitarian Aid

US responds to humanitarian crisis in northern Iraq

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ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) recently began an offensive on Sinjar, a city in the north western region of Nineveh in Iraq and home to at least 200,000 of the world’s 700,000 members of the Yazidi faith. While most fled to refugee camps in semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, some 30,000 families ended up on Mount Sinjar, where they are now stranded, surrounded by jihadists.

U.S. military cargo planes airdropped 5,300 gallons of water and 8,000 meals onto Mount Sinjar, where it has been reported some Yazidi children had died from dehydration.

The British government said Friday it would support the U.S. humanitarian effort and planned airdrops of its own.

Meanwhile, the United Nations in Iraq was “urgently preparing a humanitarian corridor to allow those in need to flee the areas under threat,” said Nickolay Mladenov, the special representative to the U.N. secretary-general.

After the airdrops, President Obama then authorized “targeted airstrikes” against ISIS. The militant group’s new, abbreviated name, Islamic State, reflects its goal to establish a Sunni caliphate stretching from Syria to Baghdad. Obama made clear he had no intention of sending in ground forces.

[CNN]

Humanitarian crisis in northern Iraq as ISIS advances

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The advance of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group in Northern Iraq has displaced about 200,000 people, most of them coming from the Yazidi ethnic minority.

Iraqis displaced by fighting in the north-west of the country must be given urgent humanitarian assistance, Amnesty International said on Tuesday.

The appeal was made after hoards of civilians fled the town of Sinjar and surrounding areas following an attack by militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), which now goes by the name of the Islamic State. Tens of thousands are trapped without basic necessities or vital supplies in the Sinjar Mountain area south of the city, the human rights movement said in a statement.

“The civilians trapped in the mountain area are not only at risk of being killed or abducted by ISIS; they are also suffering from a lack of water, food and medical care, the organization said.

They are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis Response Adviser, who is currently in northern Iraq.

UN special representative of the secretary general for Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, urged the country’s authorities to “work with the UN to ensure the delivery of life saving humanitarian assistance.” He has also called on the Kurdistan Regional Government, embattling the jihadists, to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid.

[KUNA]

Gaza misery heightened by latest war

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For the more than 1.8 million people squeezed into Gaza, a territory about twice the size of Washington DC, chaos has always infringed on the daily rhythms of life.

But the latest conflict with neighboring Israel has compounded the misery of many. Since Israel began Operation Protective Edge against Hamas on July 8, about 520,000 people in the small, impoverished territory have been displaced by the conflict, according to the United Nations. That is 29% of the territory’s inhabitants!

The United Nations estimates that more than 10,000 homes have been destroyed or severely damaged in Gaza, an already crowded and impoverished territory.

And after Gaza’s only power plant was hit, residents are without electricity. Without refrigeration. Without water pumps and sewage systems.

At the main hospital, already stretched by weeks of fighting that left close to 1,900 people dead and thousands wounded, a pair of mega-generators powered crucial life-support equipment.

“We cannot supply electricity to hospitals or water pumps or sewage treatment or for domestic use,” Fathi al-Sheikh Khalil, deputy chairman of the Palestinian Energy and Natural Resources Authority in Gaza said. “People have to pump the water to the residential tanks but don’t have electricity.”

Jamal Derdsawoi, a representative of Gaza’s electric company, pointed at Israel. “By attacking the power plant and cutting the electricity, they’re killing the civilian life in Gaza,” he said.

The United Nations has said that a deliberate strike on the plant would be a violation of humanitarian law.

[CNN]

The Norm in Gaza

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Excerpts of an opinion piece by eminent political philosopher Noam Chomsky:

On July 17, Malaysian Airlines MH17 was shot down in Eastern Ukraine, killing 298 civilians. President Obama denounced it as an “outrage of unspeakable proportions.” His UN Ambassador thundered that “we must stop at nothing to determine who is responsible and to bring them to justice.”

With the Israeli attack on Gaza in July [which to date has killed nearly 1800], President Obama spoke out of his “strong condemnation of rocket and tunnel attacks against Israel by the militant group Hamas,” while “also expressing ‘growing concern’ about the rising number of Palestinian civilian deaths in Gaza,” but without condemnation. The Senate filled that gap, voting unanimously to support Israeli actions in Gaza.

This is the norm.

[Another part of] the norm in Gaza is described in detail by the heroic Norwegian trauma surgeon Mads Gilbert, who has worked in Gaza’s main hospital, and just before this latest Israeli onslaught, submitted a report on the Gaza health sector to UNRWA, the UN Agency that tries desperately, on a shoestring, to care for refugees.

“At least 57 % of Gaza households are food insecure and about 80 % are now aid recipients,” Gilbert reports. “Food insecurity and rising poverty also mean that most residents cannot meet their daily caloric requirements, while over 90 % of the water in Gaza has been deemed unfit for human consumption,” a situation that is becoming even worse as Israel again attacks water and sewage systems, leaving over a million people with even more severe disruption of the barest necessity of life.

Gilbert reports that “Palestinian children in Gaza are suffering immensely. A large proportion are affected by the man-made malnourishment regime caused by the Israeli imposed blockage. Prevalence of anaemia in children under 2yrs of age in Gaza is at 72.8%, while prevalence of wasting, stunting, underweight have been documented at 34.3%, 31.4%, 31.45% respectively.”

Another norm for Gaza: For the past 14 years, Israel has killed more than two Palestinian children a week.

The distinguished human rights lawyer Raji Sourani, who has remained in Gaza through years of terror, reports that “The most common sentence I heard when people began to talk about ceasefire: everybody says it’s better for all of us to die and not go back to the situation we used to have before this war. We don’t want that again. We have no dignity, no pride; we are just soft targets, and we are very cheap. Either this situation really improves or it is better to just die. I am talking about intellectuals and academics ….ordinary people [are] saying that.”

Similar sentiments have been widely voiced: it is better to die with dignity than to be slowly strangled by the torturer.

Another U.N. school in Gaza struck by Israeli shelling, “a moral outrage and a criminal act”

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Yet another attack near a school used as a U.N.-run shelter in Gaza led to new carnage as the conflict between Israel and Hamas raged unabated. Before these latest attacks on Sunday, which UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl identified as an Israeli strike, the health ministry had put the cumulative death toll in Gaza at 1,712.

An undetermined number of other people were killed and several others wounded Sunday in the shelling near the school in Rafah, in southern Gaza, the spokesman for the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said. “The dead and wounded in Rafah are still under the rubble and in the streets,” Health Ministry spokesman Dr. Ashraf el-Qedra said.

Thousands of Gaza residents had flocked to the shelter to escape weeks of violence — only to encounter more bloodshed. Witnesses said those killed or hurt were waiting in line for food supplies when a missile hit.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the latest incident “a moral outrage and a criminal act.” “The attack is yet another gross violation of international humanitarian law,” Ban’s office said in a written statement. “… This attack, along with other breaches of international law, must be swiftly investigated and those responsible held accountable.”

Chris Gunness, spokesman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, tweeted that the school was sheltering almost 3,000 internally displaced people. “I can confirm a shelling incident has caused multiple deaths and injuries in the vicinity of a school,” Gunness told CNN’s “New Day” on Sunday morning.

At least two other U.N.-run schools-turned-shelter in Gaza have been pounded by violence in the past month.

[CNN]

Gaza death toll hits 1387 amidst ever worsening humanitarian situation

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Israeli airstrikes and shelling continued overnight and into the morning, bringing the Palestinian death toll to 1,395 with 8,100 injured, according to the Ministry of Health. The Israeli military confirmed that 20 “sites” had been hit overnight.

The deaths in the besieged Gaza Strip come on the 24th day of an Israeli assault which has nearly topped the death toll from the 2008-9 Cast Lead, the bloodiest attack on the area in memory when Israel killed 1,400 in 22 days.

Meanwhile, the United States confirmed it had restocked Israel’s supplies of ammunition, hours after finally condemning an Israeli attack on a United Nations school in Gaza that killed 16 people sheltering there.  And the Israeli military has called up 16,000 more reserve soldiers to join its assault of Gaza.

The Pentagon confirmed the Israeli military had requested additional ammunition to restock its dwindling supplies on July 20, with the US Defense Department approving the sale just three days later. Two of the requested munitions came from a little-known stockpile of ammunition stored by the US military on the ground in Israel for emergency use. The War Reserve Stockpile Ammunition-Israel is estimated to be worth $1 billion.

Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel told his Israeli counterpart that the United States was concerned about the deadly consequences of the spiraling conflict, including a “worsening humanitarian situation” in Gaza, and called for a ceasefire and end to hostilities.

Relations between Israel and its staunch ally the United States have plunged in recent days after John Kerry returned from a mission to the Middle East to try to broker a ceasefire between the Israelis and Hamas militants.

Anonymous Israeli officials have hit out at Kerry’s truce proposal, calling it “a strategic terrorist attack”. Hamas has insisted that any ceasefire include an end to the eight-year Israeli blockade, which has severely crippled the tiny coastal enclave’s economy and led to recurring shortages of basic goods.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Watch a live broadcast, as Chris Gunness of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees, states, “The rights of Palestinians, even their children, are wholesale denied, and it’s appalling,” and then proceeds to break down sobbing uncontrollably, until the camera finally darts away.

UNRWA Commissioner-General “strongly condemns” Israeli shelling of UN Gaza school

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120 Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes on Tuesday. A top PLO official, meanwhile, said that Palestinian factions in Gaza had agreed to a day-long humanitarian truce.

The conflict, so far just over three weeks old, has seen over 1,260 Palestinians killed, mostly civilians according to the United Nations, and injured another 7,000.

56 lives have been lost on the Israeli side, all but three of them soldiers.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Tuesday that nearly 5,000 homes had been destroyed in Gaza as of late Monday, a number expected to rise amid renewed bombardment.

The World Health Organization now estimates that more than 215,000 Palestinians, or one out of eight Gazans, have fled their homes in the overcrowded territory. Many have headed for already-cramped UN schools in the north.

Earlier today, one of those schools was struck by the Israelis, the UNRWA girls’ school in Jabalia refugee camp, with twenty people killed, emergency services report. A UN official confirmed the shelling, saying that the missile hit a bathroom and two classrooms in the school, AFP reported. More than one shell hit the school, the first in the courtyard and the second a section primarily used by female pupils.

Currently, at least five UN schools are caught in the fighting.

Pierre Krähenbühl, the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, the UN Agency providing assistance and protection to Palestine refugees, tweeted: “This is 6th time one of our UNRWA schools has been struck. Our staff leading int’l response are being killed. This is a breaking point.“ And “I strongly condemn today’s Israeli shelling of UNRWA school in Jabalia Gaza. No words to adequately express my anger and indignation.”

 

Note: In 2006, Israeli rocket fire resulted in 2200 being killed in Gaza; in 2009, another 1400 killed in Gaza; and in 2012 two hundred killed in Gaza.

Aid workers forced to flee Gaza amidst fighting and destruction

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Today Hamas-run television aired what it said were live images from Shifa Hospital after an Israeli drone made a “direct” strike. The Israel Defense Forces sent a text message to media blaming “failed rocket attacks launched by Gaza terrorists” for the attack on Gaza’s biggest public hospital and another spot nearby, Al-Shati Refugee Camp.

Since the beginning of this Israeli incursion, at least 1,100 Palestinians have died, according to medical officials in Gaza, and more than 180,000 displaced Palestinians have packed into 82 make-shift shelters.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat “90% of those killed are women and children.” UNICEF said that about two-thirds of the children killed were 12 years old or younger. The United Nations estimates that more than 70% of the Palestinians killed were civilians.

Estimates indicate that 70 percent of the population of Gaza is now without access to safe water. The main sewage pumping station and primary sewage treatment plant has been hit directly, and sewage is flowing directly into the Mediterranean as well as down the streets into the neighborhoods and fields, contaminating a huge amount of area.

Last week, when fighting was briefly suspended in parts of Gaza, it allowed for some evacuations of the wounded.

But at least one of those rescue missions was short-lived when the International Red Cross and the Palestinian Red Crescent entered the battered and embattled Gaza City neighborhood of Shaja’ia and had to turn back themselves, under fire.

The area has been shelled almost around the clock for more than four days as part of Israel’s offensive against Hamas.

“The small arms fire is increasing in intensity, and directed at us [but] we’re coming back,” Red Cross veteran Larry Maybee said.

United Nations workers trying to aid people in Gaza found themselves stuck between Israeli soldiers and Hamas fighters, with neither side showing any sign of backing down.

[CNN]

No place to hide from the brutalities of Gaza war

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Excerpts of article by Richard Falk, an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years, and in 2008 was also appointed by the UN to serve as the Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights:

The civilian population of Gaza, estimated to be about 1.7 million with women and children comprising 75% of the total, are trapped in an overcrowded war zone with no apparent exit from terrifying danger.

Even if families are lucky enough to avoid direct physical injury, the experience of screaming jet fighters attacking through the night, targeting and surveillance drones overhead day and night, sustained naval artillery barrages, not to mention the threatened ground  invasion combine to create a continuous horror show. It has been repeatedly confirmed by mental health specialists that these realities act as a trauma inducing phenomenon on a massive scale with prospects of lasting psychological damage, especially to children.

Very few residents of Gaza have the option of leaving, whether disabled, sick, elderly, or young. The civilian population of Gaza is denied the possibility of seeking refugee status by fleeing Gaza during this time of intense warfare, and there is no space available that might allow Palestinian civilians to become internally displaced within Gaza until Israel’s “Protective Edge” ends. At present writing, an estimated 17,000 Palestinians have obtained refuge in the 20 UN-run schools situated throughout Gaza. UNRWA is doing its heroic best to handle these desperate people but its buildings have limited space and lack the facilities to handle properly this kind humanitarian emergency–insufficient bathrooms, no beds, and not enough space to meet the demands.

The idea of fulfilling the basic objective of international humanitarian law to protect civilians caught in a war zone is being violated by Israel, although not altogether. Israeli officials claim that leaflets dropped on some intended targets are giving residents a few minutes to vacate their homes before they are reduced to rubble. The entrapment of the Gazan population within closed borders is part of a deliberate Israeli pattern of prolonged collective punishment that has for the past several years been imposed on Gaza. This amounts to a grave breach of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which qualifies as a potential Crime Against Humanity.

International refugee law avoids issues associated with any right to escape from a war zone or duty of the belligerent parties to provide civilians with an exit and/or a temporary place of sanctuary. International humanitarian law offers little more by way of protection to an entrapped people, despite the seeming relevance of the Fourth Geneva Convention devoted to the Protection of Civilians in Time of War.

Little help from Gaza’s southern front

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The last time Israel waged all-out war on Hamas in 2012, Egypt brokered the ceasefire that ended it. Under former President Mohamed Morsi, fraternal relations with Hamas, a fellow Muslim Brotherhood alum, got even warmer.

But this time, as the Gaza crisis has escalated, the new Egyptian government has shied away from a mediating role. The cautious response to the Gaza crisis by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is a balancing act between its desire to see Israel weaken Hamas without risking its own border security and street-level anger in Egypt over a policy seen as favoring Israel.

So far, Egypt’s humanitarian response has been tepid: The Rafah border has been opened for a limited number of ambulances. Egyptian doctors waiting on stand-by in the nearest hospital to the border say Gaza’s health ministry has sent fewer cases than expected. “As medical professionals, we stay out of the politics,” says hospital director Dr Sami Anwar. “We are ready to do our best.”

Meanwhile in Gaza’s hospitals, the situation has grown dire – at least five health facilities have been damaged by airstrikes in their vicinities, and there are severe shortages of medical supplies, according to the United Nations. The Shifa hospital, close to the Egyptian border, said its morgue was full.

[Christian Science Monitor]