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.


Lebanese haunted by Assad say his fall is ‘divine justice’

Updated 6 sec ago
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Lebanese haunted by Assad say his fall is ‘divine justice’

  • For almost 30 years, the government of Hafez Assad and then his son Bashar — whom rebels ousted on Sunday after 13 years of war — held Lebanon in a stranglehold
  • Syrian forces only quit Lebanon in 2005 after enormous pressure following the assassination of former prime minister Rafic Hariri, a killing attributed to Damascus and its ally Hezbollah
BEIRUT, Lebanon: Many in Lebanon who suffered through decades of brutal rule in Syria that extended across the border say the fall of longtime leader Bashar Assad is “divine justice,” but want him held accountable.
For almost 30 years, the government of Hafez Assad and then his son Bashar — whom rebels ousted on Sunday after 13 years of war — held Lebanon in a stranglehold.
The Syrian army entered the country in 1976 as part of an Arab force that was supposed to put an end to Lebanon’s civil war, which began a year earlier.
But instead it became the dominant military and political force, looming over all aspects of Lebanese life.
Syrian forces only quit Lebanon in 2005 after enormous pressure following the assassination of former prime minister Rafic Hariri, a killing attributed to Damascus and its ally Hezbollah.
A United Nations-backed court in 2022 sentenced two Hezbollah members in absentia to life imprisonment for the crime.
“Divine justice has been served, even if there has been no punishment” for Assad, said Rania Ghanem Gantous, who maintains her father Antoine Ghanem was killed by Syrian forces in a 2007 car bomb blast near his east Beirut home.
“We want to see those who committed these crimes punished here on earth,” said Gantous, whose father was a lawmaker with Lebanese Christian Kataeb (Phalange) party, which opposed the Syrian presence.
Gantous said the fall of Assad was a “glorious day,” but that she was torn between “joy and sadness.”
“My father’s death was a terrible loss and I miss him a lot,” she said, adding she was also “happy for the end of the tyranny” of the Assad family’s rule “after 50 years of oppression.”
Zaher Eido expressed similar sentiment, 17 years after his father Walid Eido was assassinated in a 2007 car bomb.
Another son of the former lawmaker from Hariri’s Future Movement was also killed in the blast.
“The fall of the regime in Damascus has lifted the spirits of my mother and those who have endured its repression,” Eido told AFP.
But with “a father who was a judge, and a brother who was a lawyer, I believe justice will not be served until Bashar Assad is tried and his punishment, whether death or life in prison or something else, is served,” he added.
The evening of Assad’s ouster, Lebanese television channel LBCI began its news broadcast announcing that “he who committed the worst butchery, murders, explosions and arrests, whether in Syria, Lebanon or against the Palestinians, has fallen.”
Fireworks lit up the sky over another local broadcaster MTV, whose journalists began the news program displaying photographs of presumed victims of Assad’s government.
The included president-elect Bashir Gemayel, who was killed in 1982 less than a month after his election, as well as president Rene Mouawad, assassinated in 1989, and Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt, who was killed in 1977.
“Assad’s Syria is dead, long live the new Syria. A free Syria is born,” the channel’s news broadcast said, inviting “Beirut to rejoice.”
Presenter Marcel Ghanem later opened a bottle of champagne on air to celebrate “the fall of the regime of repression.”
“I’ve always thought that justice was a question of time,” said Yasma Fleihan, the widow of former minister and lawmaker Bassel Fleihan, who died of wounds sustained in the 2005 blast that killed Hariri.
“Assad’s fall brings justice to all those who were killed, threatened or tortured,” she told AFP.
In Beirut’s Sassine Square, Nassib Ibrahim, 76, recalled the days in 1978 when Syrian forces were bombing the area, where his brother was also killed.
The fall of Assad was “the best day of my life,” he said.
“He tried to humiliate us but he fled and was humiliated himself.

Yemen’s Houthis say they targeted three supply ships and two American destroyers

Updated 10 December 2024
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Yemen’s Houthis say they targeted three supply ships and two American destroyers

  • Houthis targeted two American destroyers

CAIRO: Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis targeted three supply ships and two American destroyers accompanying them in the Gulf of Aden, a military spokesman for the Houthis said on Tuesday.


G7 to discuss Syria crisis in talks Friday: US

Updated 10 December 2024
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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 10 December 2024
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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 militant 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 militant 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.