2 million residents of war-ravaged Aleppo without running water

The United Nations is calling for an immediate halt to the fighting and at minimum a two-day weekly humanitarian cease-fire to allow for the city’s water and electrical systems to be repaired. But there’s another round of fighting ongoing in the strategically significant city.

Aleppo is divided in two: the rebel-held east and government-held west. But for civilians, it’s “a city now united in its suffering,” as U.N. officials put it. “These cuts are coming amid a heat wave, putting children at a grave risk of waterborne diseases,” Hanaa Singer, the UNICEF representative in Syria, said in the statement.

“Syrian state media say government and Russian warplanes continue to target rebel positions,” NPR reports. “And rebels, led by a former al-Qaida affiliate, are vowing to take the entire city.”

In western Aleppo, aid groups have been delivering emergency water to an estimated 325,000 people.

[NPR]

Israel accuses UN employee of helping Hamas

Israel indicted an employee of the United Nations Development Programme on Tuesday, alleging that he helped the militant group Hamas.

This news comes just days after Israel accused a World Vision employee of funneling millions to Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.

As The Two-Way reported last night, World Vision has cast doubt on Israel’s accusations, saying they seemed implausible.Israel, for example, says World Vision’s Gaza director, Mohammad El Halabi, diverted up to $50 million to Hamas, but World Vision says its entire operating budget in Gaza during the past 10 years adds up to about $22.5 million.

“World Vision’s accountability processes cap the amount individuals in management positions at his level to a signing authority of $15,000,” said Kevin Jenkins, president and CEO of World Vision.

Hamas also called the claims “baseless.”

[NPR]

Devastation in South Sudan triggers grave humanitarian crisis

South Sudan is reeling from an unprecedented humanitarian crisis a month after deadly clashes between government and opposition forces set off a fresh cycle of violence and displacements, the UN has warned.

About 6 million South Sudanese – more than half of the country’s population – are now in need of humanitarian assistance, with 4.8 million facing severe hunger.

In Juba, the most recent surge in violence has left hungry, displaced families with a heart-wrenching choice: to stay inside the UN camp for displaced people and watch their children starve, or to fetch food from outside but risk attacks by marauding soldiers. More than a hundred women driven out of the camp by hunger were raped in the aftermath of the most recent violence, according to UN figures.

Experts fear that the country is on the brink of famine. An outbreak of disease could push mortality rates – one of three indicators used to define a famine – much higher.

Restrictions on movement and attacks against aid workers have further hampered relief efforts. Since the beginning of the year, the UN has recorded 261 incidents of violence against humanitarian staff or assets.

[The Guardian]

Closing a final chapter in the five-year Syrian war?

The Syrian Arab Army and Russian forces may be about to close the final chapter in the five-year Syrian war – and the Western media don’t seem to want to know about it. Indeed, most media coverage is given to [the presidential candidates]. While [they are] declaring how [they] would wipe out Islamist terrorists in the Middle East, the Syrian army and its Russian allies were actually getting on with that very job.

Syria’s northern city of Aleppo – which was the country’s biggest city before the onset of the war in 2011 – is about to be fully retaken by the Syrian army, supported by Russian air power. Humanitarian corridors have been created to allow civilians and surrendering fighters to escape before the final assault begins on anti-government militias holed up in the east of the city. These militants are an amalgam of illegally armed groups, including the proscribed terrorist brigades affiliated to al-Qaeda. Western governments and media meanwhile engage in cynical word games by referring to some of the fighters as “moderates” and “rebels”.

What Syrian and Russian forces seem to be about to achieve in the recapture of Aleppo is nothing short of a historic victory. It is not just the symbolism of regaining Syria’s second city, which has the strategic significance for government-controlled Damascus. With its proximity to the Turkish border, Aleppo has been a bastion for illicit flow of weapons and mercenaries that has fueled the entire Syrian conflict.

In many ways, Aleppo represents the last stand for the regime-change forces.

[Sputnik]

Costa Rica expects asylum claims to quadruple as refugees head south

Tens of thousands of Central Americans from the “Northern Triangle” countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have fled their homes in recent years to escape violent criminal gangs who regularly target civilians for murder, rape and extortion.

While most of this migrant flow still heads north toward the United States, some refugees have found homes elsewhere on the Central American isthmus.

While Belize and Panama have also seen spikes in migration, Costa Rica, one of the most politically and economically stable countries in the region, has become an attractive alternative for Central American refugees.

Asylum claims in Costa Rica are set to quadruple this year from 2014 as stricter controls in Mexico and the US force Central Americans fleeing violence and political instability to find new migration routes.

[The Guardian]

Australia accused of abusing refugees

Since 2012, refugees arriving in Australia by boat have been transferred to offshore centers in small Pacific nations such as Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island.

As of the end of June, Australia government records say that 442 people were in detention on Nauru, including a number of children, from Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, among other places. The Nauru government operates the detention center with support from Australia and private contractors.

Daily violence, suicide attempts and children left without medical treatment were among some of the allegations documented by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch during a visit to Australia’s detention center on the remote Pacific Island of Nauru in July.

Human Rights Watch Children’s Rights Division senior counsel Michael Bochenek was one of two researchers who visited the island with a legal visa, but without notifying authorities directly of his intent or who he worked for.

“In my experience there is no other developed country that I can think of who has pursued this course of conduct with people who are fleeing persecution, who are seeking freedom, who are accused of no crime,” Bochenek told CNN. “There is no parallel for this.”

[CNN]

Europe loses track of thousands of child refugees

European governments are losing track of significant numbers of children who have entered the continent without their parents as refugees from war-torn areas in the Middle East and beyond.

In Belgium, for example, authorities can’t account for 156 migrant children who entered the country unaccompanied since January 2015, and the number is growing.

The figures from Belgium and other parts of Europe show unaccompanied children slipping through the cracks in Europe’s social-safety net.

Lone children, according to officials and advocates, remain at the greatest risk of falling victim to labor and sexual exploitation. Some officials also worry young refugees, including those who have disappeared, could be targeted for recruiting by Islamic State and other extremist groups.

In 2015, 88,245 unaccompanied children—91% of them boys—sought asylum in the European Union, and officials estimate that there are as many as 10,000 missing migrant children. This year, 90% of migrant children arriving in Italy were unaccompanied.

[Wall Street Journal]

First evacuees from Aleppo utilize humanitarian corridor

Russia confirms 169 civilians were able to leave the opposition-held east of Syria’s Aleppo city through a “humanitarian corridor”. Dozens of families were reportedly among the evacuees.

Russia also confirmed 69 rebels had laid down arms and 59 people received medical treatment, according to the statement.

The Syrian news agency SANA said evacuees were welcomed by members of the army and taken by bus to temporary shelters. The agency carried photos showing dozens of people, mostly women and children, walking past soldiers and boarding buses. State television also broadcast footage of residents crossing from the east to the west.

SANA also reported that “armed men from eastern neighbourhoods of Aleppo” had turned themselves in to army soldiers in Salaheddin district.

Russia’s defence ministry announced four additional “humanitarian corridors” would be open from Aleppo. Three corridors had already begun working in the area, it said.

Once Syria’s economic powerhouse, Aleppo has been ravaged by the war that began in March 2011 with anti-government protests. It has been roughly divided between government control in the west and rebel control in the east since mid-2012.

[AFP]