Beirut: A funding gap is compromising the response to a measles outbreak in Lebanon, a United Nations statement said Thursday, warning it also risked allowing polio to spread from Syria.
The UN's Children Fund, which has provided free vaccines for children in Lebanon for a quarter of a century, said the first 12 weeks of 2018 had seen a sharp increase in measles cases.
It said it was currently among several partners supporting the Lebanese health ministry's immunisation campaign "not only for measles but also for polio in order to mitigate the risk of polio spreading from Syria."
"If we don't react now, more serious epidemics will hit," Tanya Chapuisat, UNICEF's representative in Lebanon, said.
The agency made a $5 million appeal to donors, arguing it needs to replenish vaccine stocks and reach vulnerable children in isolated areas.
UN warns funding gap raises Lebanon epidemics risk
UN warns funding gap raises Lebanon epidemics risk
- Measles, Polio spread in Lebanon for lack of funding
- Measles, Polio are on the rise in Lebanon for lack of government funding
Israel urging UN agencies, aid groups to replace UNRWA in Gaza, envoy says
“We, the State of Israel, are working to find substitute to the act, to the work of UNRWA inside Gaza,” Daniel Meron, Israel’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, told reporters.
He declined to give specifics but said Israel was “encouraging the UN agencies and NGOs to take over each one in its own field that they specialize in.”
Adopted orphan brings couple ‘paradise’ in war-ravaged Gaza
- Farhat, 45, and her husband Rami Al-Arouqi, 47, adopted the well-behaved and chubby baby in January
- “At first, we had mixed feelings of both joy and fear, because it is a huge responsibility and we had never had a child,” said Arouqi
GAZA CITY: In their home in war-devastated Gaza City, Iman Farhat and her husband cherish the “paradise” brought by their newly-adopted baby, one of many orphans in the Palestinian territory after more than 15 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas.
Wrapping five-month-old Jannah in a brightly colored blanket, Farhat gently sang as she rocked her to sleep.
“I chose Jannah just as she was,” the new mother said smiling, explaining the couple simply wanted to adopt a young child without preference for gender or physical appearance.
“Her name was Massa, and I officially changed her name from Massa to Jannah,” which means “paradise” in Arabic, she added.
Farhat, 45, and her husband Rami Al-Arouqi, 47, adopted the well-behaved and chubby baby in January.
“At first, we had mixed feelings of both joy and fear, because it is a huge responsibility and we had never had a child,” said Arouqi, a Palestinian Authority employee.
The couple already owned a cat.
“The idea of adopting a child had crossed our minds, but it was cemented during the war” which “wiped out entire families and left only orphans,” he added.
In September, the United Nations children’s fund, UNICEF, estimated there were 19,000 children who were unaccompanied or separated from their parents in Gaza, Jonathan Crickx, UNICEF’s spokesman for the Palestinian territories, told AFP.
Data for the number of adoptions in Gaza was not immediately available.
The war sparked by Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel left more than 69 percent of Gaza’s buildings damaged or destroyed, displaced almost the entire population and triggered widespread hunger, according to the United Nations.
Hamas’s attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 48,446 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN considers these figures reliable.
Farhat and her husband said that before Jannah’s adoption, she was taken care of by the SOS Children’s Villages — an international NGO which looks after children in need.
After the NGO’s premises in the southern Gaza city of Rafah were destroyed in the war, the organization had to move to nearby Khan Yunis where “they could not house all the children in buildings, so they set up tents for them,” Farhat said.
Her husband Arouqi told AFP that another motive for adopting a child came from the idea that “Palestinians should stand by each other’s side.”
“The whole world has abandoned and let us down, so we shouldn’t let each other down,” he added.
Once the pair took Jannah home, “our life was turned upside down in a beautiful and pleasant way,” he said.
“Her name is Jannah and our world has truly become a paradise.”
A fragile truce took effect on January 19, largely halting the devastating fighting between Israel and Hamas Palestinian militants.
The ceasefire’s first phase ended last weekend.
While Israel has said it wants to extend the first phase until mid-April, Hamas has insisted on a transition to the deal’s second phase, which should lead to a permanent end to the war.
UK warns Israel cutting Gaza electricity could breach international law
- Netanyahu government cuts power supplies a week after suspending food, medical aid into the enclave
- Pressure mounts as Israel, Hamas attempt to renegotiate ceasefire agreement
LONDON: The UK has warned Israel it could have broken international law after Benjamin Netanyahu’s government halted electricity supplies into Gaza.
The move came ahead of the second phase of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, and a week after Israel also blocked food, fuel and medical aid from entering the enclave.
The two sides have been attempting to renegotiate the terms of the ceasefire, with Hamas wanting to move on to the second phase, but Israel insisting on the release of more hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023 before any further negotiations take place.
Hamas is believed to still have 24 living hostages, as well as the bodies of another 35 people.
In a post on social media platform X, Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen said: “I have now signed an order to cut off electricity to the Gaza Strip immediately. Enough with the talk, it’s time for action!”
A UK Foreign Office spokesman said: “Humanitarian aid should never be contingent on a ceasefire or used as a political tool.
“A halt on goods and supplies entering Gaza, including basic needs such as electricity, risks breaching Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law.”
The suspension of aid into Gaza will have a detrimental effect on the lives of the 2 million people in the enclave, with fears mounting that cutting electricity will hinder the ability of locals to operate Gaza’s desalination plants, disrupting the supply of safe drinking water.
More than 48,000 people have died in Gaza since Israel began military operations against Hamas following the Oct. 7 attack.
The initial phase of the ceasefire deal, agreed on Jan. 17, has so far seen the release of 25 hostages from Gaza, with Israel releasing about 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange.
EU official cites reports accusing Assad regime of mass killings in Syria
- Anita Heber, foreign affairs and security policy spokesperson, says the EU has reports confirming the accusation
DUBAI: A top EU official on Monday claimed that remnants of the regime of ousted leader Bashar Assad were responsible for the recent mass killings in two of the Syrian Arab Republic’s coastal cities.
Speaking to Al Arabiya Television, Anita Heber, the EU’s foreign affairs and security policy spokesperson, said the body has reports confirming this charge.
Heber said the transitional authorities in Syria have moved to contain the situation, and she called for those responsible to be held accountable.
She also stressed that Europe was working toward a comprehensive political transition in Syria.
Syria’s interim president, Ahmad Al-Sharaa, has vowed he would find those who killed the Alawite civilians this past week.
In its latest report, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said 973 Alawite civilians were killed execution-style by either security personnel or pro-government fighters in the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus since March 6.
The UN’s rights chief Volker Turk said the killings “must cease immediately,” while the Arab League, US, Britain and several governments have condemned the violence.
Palestinian Authority says Israel’s Gaza electricity cut ‘escalation in genocide’
- UK govt urges Israel to lift Gaza electricity 'restrictions'
RAMALLAH: The Palestinian Authority on Monday said Israel’s decision to halt the electricity supply to Gaza was “an escalation in the genocide” in the war-ravaged territory.
The Palestinian foreign ministry said in a statement that it “strongly condemns the Israeli Ministry of Energy's decision to cut electricity to the Gaza Strip, considering it an escalation in the genocide, displacement and humanitarian disaster in Gaza”, which is controlled by Hamas and not the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority.
Th British government also urged Israel to lift the Gaza electricity “restrictions”
