Lockdown at labor camp in Qatar described as coronavirus prison

Migrant workers in Qatar have described being trapped in a coronavirus prison at the country’s largest labor camp. (File/Shutterstock)
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Updated 20 March 2020
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Lockdown at labor camp in Qatar described as coronavirus prison

  • The area is guarded by police, and workers who live there, many of whom had been working on Fifa World Cup 2022 infrastructure projects, cannot leave
  • Some workers have been told to go on unpaid leave until further notice, with only food and accommodation covered

LONDON: Migrant workers in Qatar have described being trapped in a coronavirus prison at the country’s largest labor camp.
The camp was locked down after hundreds of construction workers became sick with Covid-19.
Thousands of workers are trapped in filthy, over-crowded camps within the “Industrial Area” in Doha where the virus can spread rapidly, The Guardian reported.
The area is guarded by police, and workers who live there, many of whom had been working on Fifa World Cup 2022 infrastructure projects, cannot leave.
Qatari authorities on Tuesday announced the closure of several square kilometers of the Industrial Area.
Workers are fearful and there is an atmosphere of uncertainty.
Some workers have been told to go on unpaid leave until further notice, with only food and accommodation covered, sources at the camp told The Guardian.
“The situation is getting worse each day. Workers from camp 1 to camp 32 are in lockdown. My friends who live there are in extreme panic,” a Bangladeshi worker told The Guardian.
“We are not allowed to walk in groups or eat in a tea shop. But you can still buy food and take it home. I’m worried about my family back home. There won’t be anyone to take care of them if anything happens to me,” a Nepali worker said. He added that no one is allowed to leave the area.
On Mar. 11, authorities said 238 people under quarantine in a residential compound had tested positive for coronavirus. Subsequent announcements have linked most reported cases to migrant workers without mentioning nationalities.
Terrified workers are doing everything they can to prevent the spread of the disease. “We are doing everything to keep ourselves safe. The camp was a little dirty, so we cleaned everything, changed the bed sheets, and used spray to kill the germs,” a worker told The Guardian.
Although the country is on lockdown and has shut down almost all public spaces in the face of the outbreak, some construction workers who have not tested positive for Covid-19 say they are being forced to work after having just their temperatures checked before they begin.

Amnesty International said migrant workers trapped in camps such as those in Qatar are at particular risk of exposure to the virus.

“The Qatari government must ensure that human rights remain central to all attempts at prevention and containment of the COVID-19 virus, and also that all people have access to health care, including preventive care and treatment for everyone affected, without discrimination,” said Steve Cockburn, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director of Global Issues.

Doha’s Industrial Area is made up of warehouses, factories and workers’ accommodation. It is home to hundreds of thousands of men who live in cramped and dirty conditions. Kitchens and toilets are communal, making it very easy for virus to be transmitted.
Expats make up the majority of the population in Qatar, and the government on Thursday said there were 460 cases in the country — the highest number among the six Gulf Arab states that have reported a total of more than 1,300 coronavirus cases.


G7 to discuss Syria crisis in talks Friday: US

Updated 7 sec ago
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G7 to discuss Syria crisis in talks Friday: US

Kirby said he would have “more to say” about the agenda later in the week
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had earlier on Tuesday urged all nations to support an “inclusive” political process in Syria

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden and his G7 partners will discuss the turmoil in Syria when they hold a scheduled virtual meeting this Friday, the White House said.
The talks — which will also deal with Russia’s war in Ukraine — come days after Islamist-led militants in Syria ousted longtime ruler Bashar Assad.
“Syria and Ukraine will absolutely be on the agenda for the G7,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Tuesday.
Kirby said he would have “more to say” about the agenda later in the week “but you can bet that those two topics will be front and center.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had earlier on Tuesday urged all nations to support an “inclusive” political process in Syria.
Russia will be hovering in the background of both crises. Moscow has granted asylum to its fallen ally Assad, while it continues to push its invasion in Ukraine.
Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States make up the G7 allies, who coordinate broadly on diplomatic and economic policies.
The meeting was called days ago, before the fall of Assad, according to sources close to the prime minister’s office in Italy, which currently holds the group’s rotating presidency.
The meeting, which was scheduled as an official handover to Canada as it assumes the presidency in January, will also address “other international crises, from Ukraine to the Middle East,” the source said.

At least 176 killed in two days of Sudan battles

Updated 7 min 17 sec ago
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At least 176 killed in two days of Sudan battles

  • In Omdurman, part of the Sudanese capital, paramilitary shelling killed at least 65 people and wounded hundreds
  • A single shell on a passenger bus “killed everyone on board and turned 22 people into body parts,” said Khartoum governor Ahmed Othman Hamza

PORT SUDAN: At least 176 people were killed in two days of army and paramilitary strikes across Sudan, according to an AFP tally of tolls provided by officials, activists and lawyers on Tuesday.
In Omdurman, part of the Sudanese capital, paramilitary shelling killed at least 65 people and wounded hundreds on Tuesday, according to the state’s army-aligned governor.
A single shell on a passenger bus “killed everyone on board and turned 22 people into body parts,” said Khartoum governor Ahmed Othman Hamza.
He attributed the strike to “the terrorist militia,” in reference to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, at war with the army since April 2023.
The attack comes a day after an army air strike on a market in the North Darfur town of Kabkabiya killed over 100 people, the pro-democracy Emergency Lawyers reported Tuesday.
“The air strike took place on the town’s weekly market day, where residents from various nearby villages had gathered to shop, resulting in the death of more than 100 people and injury of hundreds, including women and children,” said the lawyers’ group, which has been documenting human rights abuses during the conflict.
The lawyers also reported six people were killed in North Kordofan state when a drone that had crashed on November 26 exploded.
In the famine-stricken Zamzam displacement camp in North Darfur, paramilitary shelling on Tuesday killed five people, according to civil society group the Darfur General Coordination of Camps for the Displaced and Refugees.
A UN-backed report in July declared famine had taken hold in the camp after a months-long RSF siege of state capital El-Fasher and the surrounding area.
The war between the RSF and the regular army has so far killed tens of thousands, uprooted 12 million and created what the United Nations has called the worst humanitarian crisis in recent memory.
It has also nearly destroyed Khartoum, control over which both sides have not managed to claim.
Most of Omdurman — the capital’s twin city across the Nile — is under army control, while the RSF holds Khartoum North (Bahri) to the east.
Residents have continuously reported shelling across the river, with bombs and shrapnel regularly striking homes on both banks.
On Tuesday, eyewitnesses said artillery was striking Omdurman from multiple fronts.
“We haven’t seen bombing this intense in six months,” one eyewitness to the passenger bus shelling told AFP, also requesting anonymity.
Another reported shelling from the Wadi Seidna army base, in northern Omdurman, toward RSF positions in western Omdurman and across the river in Bahri.
The army currently controls parts of the capital, as well as the country’s north and east.
The RSF has seized nearly the entire vast western region of Darfur, swathes of the southern Kordofan region and much of central Sudan.
Darfur, a region the size of France, is home to around a quarter of Sudan’s population but more than half its displaced people.
It has also been the site of some of the war’s most horrific violence.
In footage sent to AFP purporting to show the aftermath of Monday’s strike on the market, people were seen sifting through rubble as the charred remains of children lay on scorched ground.
The footage, which AFP was unable to independently verify, was supplied by the Darfur General Coordination of Camps for the Displaced and Refugees.
Though some drone attacks have been attributed to the RSF, the Sudanese military is the only party with fighter jets and maintains a functional monopoly on the skies.
In a statement Tuesday, the army accused RSF-affiliated political groups of “spreading lies” and said its forces “target rebel activity bases.”
The lawyers described the attack as a “horrendous massacre committed by army air strikes.”
They said recent strikes across the country were part of an “escalation campaign... deliberately concentrated on densely populated residential areas,” contradicting claims by warring parties that they only target military objectives.
Both the army and the RSF have been accused of indiscriminately targeting civilians and deliberately bombing residential areas.
On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch accused the RSF and allied Arab militias of carrying out numerous abuses against civilians in South Kordofan state from December 2023 to March 2024.
The rights organization accused the groups of “war crimes” including “killings, rapes, and abductions of ethnic Nuba residents, as well as the looting and destruction of homes.”
The group also urged the United Nations and the African Union to deploy a mission to protect civilians in Sudan.


Israel says it will impose ‘sterile defense zone’ in southern Syria

Updated 10 December 2024
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Israel says it will impose ‘sterile defense zone’ in southern Syria

  • “We will not allow this, we will not allow threats to the state of Israel,” Katz said
  • He denied that forces had penetrated Syrian territory significantly beyond the zone

JERUSALEM/DAMASCUS: Israel has ordered its forces to create a “sterile defense zone” in southern Syria that would be enforced without a permanent Israeli presence as it tightens its hold along the line between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday.
He gave no details but said the zone, would “prevent the establishment and organization of terror in Syria.”
“We will not allow this, we will not allow threats to the state of Israel,” he said in a statement following a visit to a naval base in the northern Israeli port of Haifa.
Earlier, a military spokesperson said Israeli troops remained in the demilitarized buffer zone in Syrian territory created after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war as well as “a few additional points” outside the separation area.
But he denied that forces had penetrated Syrian territory significantly beyond the zone, after Syrian sources said the incursion had extended to within 25 km (15 miles) of the capital Damascus.
“IDF forces are not advancing toward Damascus. This is not something we are doing or pursuing in any way,” Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, the military spokesperson, told a briefing with reporters.
“We are not involved in what’s happening in Syria internally, we are not a side in this conflict and we do not have any interest other than protecting our borders and the security of our citizens,” Shoshani said.
Israeli jets have struck a string of targets across Syria since the weekend, aiming to ensure Syrian military equipment, including combat aircraft, missiles and chemical weapons, does not fall into rebel hands.
As part of the wave of strikes, Katz said Israeli missile ships had destroyed the Syrian military fleet in an operation on Monday night.
Israeli media reported that the air force had carried out as many as 250 strikes. The military declined to confirm the number but did confirm it was seeking to stop Syrian military weapons from being seized and used by potential enemies.
“We’re acting to prevent lethal strategic weapons from falling into hostile hands. We’ve been doing this for years now in different ways and in different situations, and we’re doing it now,” Shoshani said.
LIMITED, TEMPORARY MEASURE
The flight of Syrian President Bashar Assad on Sunday ended over five decades of his family’s rule.
Israeli troops then moved into the demilitarised zone inside Syria, including the Syrian side of the strategic Mount Hermon that overlooks Damascus, where it took over an abandoned Syrian military post.
Israel, which has just agreed to a ceasefire in Lebanon following weeks of fighting the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement, calls the incursion a temporary measure to ensure border security.
But it remained unclear how far beyond the designated buffer zone its troops had stopped.
Three security sources said on Tuesday the Israelis had advanced beyond the demilitarised zone. One Syrian source said they had reached the town of Qatana, several kilometers (miles) to the east of the zone and just a short drive from Damascus airport.
Israel welcomed the fall of Assad, an ally of its main enemy Iran, but has reacted cautiously to the leading rebel faction, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham. HTS has roots in Islamist movements including Al-Qaeda and Islamic State though it has sought for years to moderate its image.
Israel has said it does not seek conflict with Syria. But as in southern Lebanon following the ceasefire with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement, Israeli leaders have said they will intervene whenever they feel Israel’s security is threatened.
“We will not allow an extremist Islamic terrorist entity to act against Israel across its border,” Katz said.


Israeli jets pound ‘strategic weapons systems’ across Syria

Updated 10 December 2024
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Israeli jets pound ‘strategic weapons systems’ across Syria

  • UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that it has documented more than 310 strikes by the IDF since Sunday
  • Israel FM Gideon Sa’ar: ‘That’s why we attack strategic weapons systems like chemical weapons, or long-range missiles, in order that they will not fall into the hands of extremists’

LONDON: Israeli jets have reportedly carried out hundreds of airstrikes on “strategic weapons systems” across Syria since the fall of the Assad regime.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that it has documented more than 310 strikes by the IDF since Sunday.

The strikes have targeted military facilities of the Syrian Army, including weapon warehouses, ammunition depots, airports, naval bases and research centers.

Israel claimed its actions aim to prevent weapons falling “into the hands of extremists” as Syria transitions into a post-Assad era.

The SOHR reported that the attacks spanned Aleppo, Damascus and Hama, with more than 60 taking place overnight between Monday and Tuesday alone.

Reports said that many of the facilities hit have not merely been damaged, but completely destroyed.

Rami Abdul Rahman, SOHR’s founder, described the impact of the strikes as destroying “all the capabilities of the Syrian army” and said that “Syrian lands are being violated.”

The IDF denied that its troops had strayed into Syrian territory and said that reports of tanks near Damascus are “false.”

A spokesperson said: “IDF troops are stationed within the buffer zone, as stated in the past.”

The IDF seized Syrian positions in the buffer zone as a “temporary defensive position until a suitable arrangement is found,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

“If we can establish neighborly relations and peaceful relations with the new forces emerging in Syria, that’s our desire. But if we do not, we will do whatever it takes to defend the state of Israel and the border of Israel,” he said on Monday.

Asked about the IDF strikes on Monday night, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said that Israel is only concerned with defending its citizens.

“That’s why we attack strategic weapons systems like, for example, remaining chemical weapons or long-range missiles and rockets in order that they will not fall into the hands of extremists,” he added.

It is not known where or how many chemical weapons Syria has, but it is believed that former president Bashar Assad kept stockpiles.

Israel’s attacks come after Syrian rebel fighters captured the capital, Damascus, and toppled the Assad regime over the weekend. He and his father had been in power in the country since 1971.

Forces led by the Islamist opposition group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham entered Damascus in the early hours of Sunday, before appearing on state television to declare that Syria was now “free.”


Syrians taste freedom at famous Damascus ice cream parlour

Updated 10 December 2024
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Syrians taste freedom at famous Damascus ice cream parlour

  • Idrees had last savoured it 15 years earlier, before the Syrian civil war made him a refugee
  • For more than 100 years and through many wars, Bakdash has served up an Arabic-style of ice cream that is infused with Sahlab

DAMASCUS: After racing from Lebanon to Syria to celebrate the fall of the Assad regime and making arrangements for his family to follow, 42-year-old Anas Idrees knew what was next on his list of priorities.
He ventured into the grand Hamidiyeh Souk in old Damascus until he arrived at the renowned Bakdash ice cream parlour, then ordered a large scoop of their signature mastic-infused Arabic gelato.
Idrees had last savoured it 15 years earlier, before the Syrian civil war made him a refugee.
“I swear to God, it tastes different now,” he said after eating a spoonful. “It was good before, but it’s changed because now we are happy inside.”
For more than 100 years and through many wars, Bakdash has served up an Arabic-style of ice cream that is infused with Sahlab, a flour made from orchid roots and pounded by hand with meter-long mallets until it takes on a soft, stretchy texture.
A generous heap costs just $1 per bowl, and is served coated in pistachios.
Bakdash is much-loved across Syria, but many Syrians have been unable to visit their capital city since former Syrian President Bashar Assad cracked down on pro-democracy protests in 2011, igniting a 13-year civil war that divided the country.
In the wake of Assad’s ouster following a lightning rebel advance, tens of thousands of Syrians have converged on Damascus from across the country and outside its borders.
On Monday, hundreds turned up at Bakdash, many of them fighters fresh from the battlefield who slung guns around their backs to tuck into the cool treat that sometimes got caught in long, unkempt beards.
Ahmed Aslaan, a 22-year-old combatant wearing green fatigues, said he had not seen Damascus in more than a decade and enjoying the ice cream was a perk of his newfound freedom.
“Thank God we achieved our goal. Now we can go around all of Syria in our own car,” he said between bites. “We were all stuck in a tiny area before, now we have space.”
Co-owner Samir Bakdash said reopening the day after Assad fell was his way to show his joy at the end of a government that oppressed Syrians for decades and forced him to pay bribes just to keep his shop open.
He insisted the signature recipe had not changed since his great-grandfather came up with it in the 1890s.
But even regular customers said something felt new.
“It tastes different – it’s delicious and has gotten even better,” said Eman Ghazal, a business student in her 20s who has been coming to Bakdash since she was a child.
“It’s not just the ice cream, it’s life in general. It’s as if the walls are smiling and the sun has finally come out.”