Virus hit ‘like a bomb’ as toll rises in Ecuador’s business capital

A doctor tests a man for COVID-19 in Cisne 2 neighborhood, along the banks of the Estero Salado river in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on April 14, 2020 during the novel coronavirus pandemic. (AFP)
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Updated 15 April 2020
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Virus hit ‘like a bomb’ as toll rises in Ecuador’s business capital

  • Guayaquil accounts for more than 70 percent of Ecuador’s 7,600 infections since February 29
  • Now authorities are forecasting a death toll of more than 3,500 in the city

GUAYAQUIL: Ecuador’s economic capital Guayaquil is reeling from the most aggressive outbreak of COVID-19 in Latin America after the pandemic hit the city “like a bomb,” its mayor said.
Cynthia Viteri has emerged from her own bout with the virus to battle the worst crisis the port city of nearly 3 million people has known in modern times.
“There is no space for either the living or the dead. That’s how severe the pandemic is in Guayaquil,” Viteri told AFP in a phone interview Monday.
Mortuaries, funeral homes and hospital services are overwhelmed, and Viteri said the actual death toll from the virus is likely much higher than the official national figure of 369.
Guayaquil accounts for more than 70 percent of Ecuador’s 7,600 infections since February 29.

The 54-year-old mayor admitted the city was “unprepared” for the onslaught: “Nobody believed that what we saw in Wuhan, people falling dead in the streets, would ever happen here.”
Now authorities are forecasting a death toll of more than 3,500 in the city and its hinterland in the coming months.
Guayaquil proved especially vulnerable to the virus because of its air links to Europe, Viteri said.
The first case of infection — Ecuador’s “patient zero” — was of an elderly Ecuadoran woman who arrived from Spain.
“This is where the bomb exploded, this is where patient zero arrived, and since it was vacation time, people traveled abroad, some to Europe or the United States, and our people who lived in Europe came here,” Viteri said.
“And when they arrived there were no controls like they should have been if we had known that this was already coming by air. And the city of Guayaquil simply convulsed. “
Too late, the city went into lockdown as authorities imposed a 15-hour curfew and bodies began to accumulate in homes, and even on the streets.
“The health system was obviously overwhelmed, the morgues overflowed, the funeral homes overflowed.”
Guayaquil’s authorities “are not the villains of the world,” Viteri insisted.
“We are the victims of a virus that came by air” that she said echoed the yellow fever that devastated the city when it came over the sea from Panama in 1842.
“A bomb exploded here. Other places received only the shock waves. But the crater remained here in Guayaquil.”

Viteri said the number of coronavirus deaths in the city is likely far higher than the official figure “for a single reason — because there are no tests to determine how many people are actually infected in the city and in the country.”
She continued: “Patients are dying without ever having had a test. And there is no space, time or resources to be able to carry out subsequent examinations and to know whether or not they died from the coronavirus.
“In the month of March alone, there were 1,500 more deaths than in the month of March last year.
“The true number will be known once this tragedy, this nightmare, ends.”
People are continuing to “collapse in their houses, in the hospitals, all over the place,” she said, because the normal medical services are overwhelmed.
“There are still women who need to give birth, people are still being run over, people still have diabetes and hypertension.”
She said just last month alone “100 people” had died because they were unable to get dialysis treatment.
“Why? Because there is no space. Because we are stretched to breaking point, our doctors have fallen sick too.”
Around 50 people from her own municipal staff had died, she said.
Viteri said her task now was to bring all the city’s financial resources to bear on buying test kits, with $12 million already earmarked, to be able to detect, isolate and monitor positive cases.
“For me there is no other way,” she said.
“We have to look after the living, and provide a decent burial for the dead. We are living in a war.
Responding to a spate of nightmarish media stories about bodies accumulating in hospitals, homes and streets, the city was making two new cemeteries available to bury the dead and relieve pressure on city morgues.
“The bodies are being collected daily,” Viteri said.
“But this is very hard because it means there is mourning every day in Guayaquil.”


Former Kosovo rebel commander ordered to pay victims

Updated 57 min 34 sec ago
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Former Kosovo rebel commander ordered to pay victims

  • The judges “set the total reparation award for which Mr.Shala is liable at 208,000 euros” ($220,000),” Judge Mappie Veldt-Foglia told the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague
  • Although the “responsibility to pay the compensation lies exclusively with Mr.Shala“” the judge said, “he does not appear to have the means to comply with the order“

THE HAGUE: A special international court on Friday ordered a former Kosovo rebel commander to pay $220,000 in damages to victims of abuses suffered in 1999 during the Serbian province’s struggle for independence.
Pjeter Shala, 61, also known as “Commander Wolf,” was sentenced to 18 years behind bars in July for war crimes committed during the tiny country’s 1998-99 independence conflict, when separatist KLA rebels fought forces loyal to then Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.
The judges “set the total reparation award for which Mr.Shala is liable at 208,000 euros” ($220,000),” Judge Mappie Veldt-Foglia told the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague.
“Mr Shala is ordered to pay (damages) as compensation for the harm inflicted” on eight victims, she said.
The total amount comprised individual payments to the eight victims ranging from 8,000 to 100,000 euros, as well as a collective sum of 50,000 euros, the judge said.
Although the “responsibility to pay the compensation lies exclusively with Mr.Shala“” the judge said, “he does not appear to have the means to comply with the order.”
Kosovo’s current Crime Victim Compensation Program “could be one way to execute the Reparation Order,” Veldt-Foglia suggested.
However, the maximum sums per victim awarded by the program would be lower than those awarded by the court, she said.
Shala faced charges of murder, torture, arbitrary detention and cruel treatment of at least 18 civilian detainees accused of working as spies or collaborating with opposing Serb forces in mid-1999.
The judges acquitted him of cruel treatment and he was sentenced on the other three counts.
The judges said Shala was part of a group of KLA soldiers who severely mistreated detainees at a metal factory serving as a KLA headquarters in Kukes, northeastern Albania, at the time.
Shala was tried before the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, a court located in The Hague to prosecute mainly former KLA fighters for war crimes.
They included former KLA political commander Hashim Thaci, who dominated Kosovo’s politics after it declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and rose to become president of the tiny country.
Thaci resigned in 2020 to face war crimes and crimes against humanity charges, and has pleaded not guilty.


Germany indicts Turkish national for spying on alleged Gulen activists

Updated 29 November 2024
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Germany indicts Turkish national for spying on alleged Gulen activists

  • Gulen built a powerful Islamic movement in Turkiye and beyond

BERLIN: German federal prosecutors on Friday said they had indicted a Turkish national for alleged spying on individuals that he associated with cleric Fethullah Gulen.
The suspect, who is not in jail and was only identified as Mehmet K., in line with German privacy laws, contacted Turkiye’s police and intelligence service via anonymous letters, prosecutors added.
Gulen built a powerful Islamic movement in Turkiye and beyond, but spent his later years in the US mired in accusations of orchestrating an attempted coup against Turkish leader Tayyip Erdogan.
Gulen died last month.


At least 15 dead, 113 missing, in Uganda landslides

Updated 29 November 2024
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At least 15 dead, 113 missing, in Uganda landslides

  • Landslides late on Wednesday hit the village of Masugu in the eastern Bulambuli district, about five hours from the capital, Kampala
  • Images on local media showed huge swathes of fallen earth covering the land

KAMPALA: Landslides that hit several villages in eastern Uganda killed 15 people and left more than 100 unaccounted for, police said Thursday.
The East African country has been deluged by heavy rains in past days, with the government issuing a national disaster alert after reports of flooding and landslides.
Landslides late on Wednesday hit the village of Masugu in the eastern Bulambuli district, about five hours from the capital, Kampala.
Images on local media showed huge swathes of fallen earth covering the land.
“A total of 15 bodies have been retrieved,” the Ugandan police said in a statement posted on X, adding that another 15 people had been taken to hospital.
“Unfortunately, 113 people are still missing, but efforts are underway to locate them,” it said.
The statement said five villages — Masugu, Namachele, Natola, Namagugu, and Tagalu — had been impacted.
Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja told NBS television that they “believe” all the missing were presumed dead.
“We are trying to exhume the bodies of those missing people,” she said, adding that at least 19 people had been injured, two of them in critical condition.
District commissioner Faheera Mpalanyi said early Thursday that six bodies, including a baby, had been recovered so far from Masugu village.
“Given the devastation and the size of the area affected and from what the affected families are telling us, several people are missing and probably buried in the debris,” she said.
Ugandan Red Cross spokesperson Irene Nakasiita said on X that 15 bodies had been recovered, including seven children.
Some 45 homes had been “completely buried,” she added.
Police said rescue operations were being hindered by impassable roads, blocking ambulances and rescue vehicles from reaching the scene.
A Uganda Red Cross video showed a huddle of people desperately digging through earth as women wailed in the background.
Some 500 soldiers had been deployed to help with the rescue but only 120 had managed to reach the villages, Nabbanja said.
The scale of the multiple landslides was unclear.
Videos and photographs shared on social media purported to show people digging for survivors in Kimono village, also located in the Bulambuli district.
The Ugandan prime minister’s office issued an alert, writing on X: “Heavy rains on Wednesday in parts of Uganda have led to disaster situations in many areas.”
The rains caused flooding in the northwest after a tributary of the Nile River burst its banks.
Emergency teams were deployed to rescue stranded motorists.
A major road connecting the country with South Sudan was obstructed late on Wednesday, with emergency boat crews deployed near the town of Pakwach.
“Unfortunately, one of the boats capsized, resulting in the death of one engineer,” Uganda’s defense forces said on X.
The deadliest landslide in Africa ravaged Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown in August 2017, when 1,141 people perished.
Mudslides in the Mount Elgon region of eastern Uganda killed more than 350 people in February 2010.
Earlier this year, more than 30 people died in Kampala after a massive rubbish landslide.


Dozens feared dead in Nigeria boat accident

Updated 29 November 2024
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Dozens feared dead in Nigeria boat accident

  • Rescue operations were currently underway, but the exact number of fatalities was unknown

ABUJA: Dozens of people were feared dead after a boat capsized on the Niger River in central Nigeria, a waterways agency spokesperson said on Friday.
National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) spokesperson Makama Suleiman said the boat was carrying mostly traders from Missa community in the central Kogi state heading to a weekly market in the neighboring Niger state.
Suleiman said that rescue operations were currently underway, but the exact number of fatalities was unknown.
None of the passengers were wearing life jackets, which significantly increased the risk of fatalities, he said.


UK spy chief says Russia behind ‘staggeringly reckless’ sabotage in Europe

Updated 29 November 2024
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UK spy chief says Russia behind ‘staggeringly reckless’ sabotage in Europe

  • Richard Moore, head of MI6, said: “We have recently uncovered a staggeringly reckless campaign of Russian sabotage in Europe”
  • “If Putin succeeds China would weigh the implications, North Korea would be emboldened and Iran would become still more dangerous“

PARIS: Britain’s foreign spy chief accused Russia on Friday of waging a “staggeringly reckless campaign” of sabotage in Europe while also stepping up its nuclear sabre-rattling to scare other countries off from backing Ukraine.
Richard Moore, head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service known as MI6, said that any softening in support for Ukraine against Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion would embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies.
In what appeared a message to incoming US President Donald Trump’s administration and some European allies that have questioned continued support for Ukraine in the grinding war, Moore argued that Europe and its transatlantic partners must hold firm in the face of what he said was growing aggression.
“We have recently uncovered a staggeringly reckless campaign of Russian sabotage in Europe, even as Putin and his acolytes resort to nuclear sabre-rattling to sow fear about the consequences of aiding Ukraine,” he said in a speech in Paris.
“The cost of supporting Ukraine is well known but the cost of not doing so would be infinitely higher. If Putin succeeds China would weigh the implications, North Korea would be emboldened and Iran would become still more dangerous.”
In September, Moore said Russia’s intelligence services had gone “a bit feral” in the latest warning by NATO and other Western spy chiefs about what they call hostile Russian actions, ranging from repeated cyberattacks to Moscow-linked arson.
Moscow has denied responsibility for all such incidents. The Russian embassy in London did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on Moore’s remarks.
Last month the UK’s domestic spy chief said Russia’s GRU military intelligence service was seeking to cause “mayhem.” Sources familiar with US intelligence have told Reuters Moscow is likely to step up its campaign against European targets to increase pressure on the West over its support for Kyiv.

LOOKING FORWARD TO TRUMP
Much of Moore’s speech was focused on the importance of Western solidarity, saying the collective strength of Britain’s allies would outmatch Putin who, he said, was becoming increasingly in hock to China, North Korea and Iran.
Trump, who has vowed to quickly end the war in Ukraine, without saying how, and other Republicans in the US have expressed reservations about Washington’s strong strategic support and heavy weapons supplies for Kyiv.
“If Putin is allowed to succeed in reducing Ukraine to a vassal state he will not stop there. Our security — British, French, European and transatlantic — will be jeopardized,” Moore said.
In general terms, Moore said the world was in its most dangerous state in his 37 years working in the intelligence world, with Daesh on the rise again, Iran’s nuclear ambitions a continued threat, and the radicalising impact of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel not yet fully known.
Nicolas Lerner, head of France’s foreign spy agency DGSE, said French and UK intelligence were working closely together “to face what is undoubtedly one of the threats — if not the threat — in my opinion, the possible atomic proliferation in Iran.” Iran has repeatedly denied seeking nuclear weapons.