Spike in deaths in Darfur points to coronavirus’ invisible spread

United Nations African Union Mission in Darfur peacekeepers provide masks and hand sanitizers to local population El-Fasher in North Darfur of Sudan. (UNAMID via AP)
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Updated 13 June 2020
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Spike in deaths in Darfur points to coronavirus’ invisible spread

  • Humanitarian workers and medical personnel believe the coronavirus is spreading unchecked and untracked
  • Sudan’s health care system is in disarray after years of war and sanctions

CAIRO: In the sprawling refugee camps of Darfur, the war-scarred western region of Sudan, officials say the elderly are falling sick and dying at astonishing rates.
In North Darfur’s provincial capital of El-Fasher, some say they scroll through a dozen death announcements each day: Another old friend, relative, community leader lost with dizzying speed.
Doctors in the region’s few functioning hospitals report an influx of patients with symptoms like a lost sense of taste, breathing troubles and fevers. The official causes of their untimely deaths remain “unknown.”
Humanitarian workers and medical personnel believe the coronavirus is spreading unchecked and untracked through Sudan’s most marginalized territory, where medical facilities are few and far between and where years of conflict have left some 1.6 million people crammed into refugee camps.
Nationwide, Sudan has reported 6,879 coronavirus infections and 433 deaths, according to the Health Ministry. Of those, 193 cases and 54 fatalities have been confirmed across Darfur — a figure experts believe is a vast undercount.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, public health officials have sounded the alarm that the coronavirus will take a disastrous toll on the world’s most vulnerable regions, particularly refugee camps, where social distancing, even hand-washing, prove impossible.
“People in the camps are suffocating, they can’t breathe,” said Mohamed Hassan Adam, director of Abushouk displacement camp in North Darfur. Just a corner of the camp saw 64 unexplained deaths in one month, he said. His four neighbors, all in their sixties, grew feeble and vanished one by one.
“They get exhausted then they die. There is no way to tell what happened,” he said.
Authorities are scrambling to curb the spread of contagion amid a fragile democratic transition after massive protests last year toppled longtime autocrat Omar Al-Bashir.
“We are in the eye of the storm,” said Ashraf Issa, spokesman for the UN-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, referring to the country’s exponential surge in infections.
Sudan’s health care system is in disarray after years of war and sanctions. Dire shortages of protective equipment and staff nationwide prompted strikes by medical workers as infections rise in their ranks. A drastic undersupply of drugs and hard currency forces the sick to purchase essential medicine out of pocket. A lack of fuel has made it increasingly difficult for doctors and patients to reach hospitals.
“These are the problems that Sudan faces everywhere, but in Darfur it is more severe,” said Dr. Babikir El-Magboul, director of the Health Ministry’s Emergency and Epidemiology Department. “It’s like a separate continent.”
Many in Darfur’s camps are undernourished and weakened by infectious diseases like malaria and acute watery diarrhea. At Abushouk camp, each bathroom is shared by dozens of people. Around the territory, markets and mosques — along with a growing number of funerals — continue to draw crowds.
Darfur, with a population of 9 million, has only around 600 health facilities, or one per 15,000 people. With facilities scattered over an area the size of Spain, residents in rural areas must travel long distances to reach one. Doctors say quarantine centers have no more than a few dozen beds, two or three ventilators and cheap gowns and surgical masks for protection equipment.
Before a new testing center opened this month in Nyala, South Darfur, testing was centralized in one laboratory in the capital, Khartoum, which processes just around 270 samples each day. Health workers in Darfur say that results can take a week to come through.
To fill the gap, some local doctors are working to grasp the virus’ toll.
When El Fasher saw a spike in over 200 “mysterious” fatalities in just two weeks, officials launched an investigation. Dr. Taher Ahmed, deputy dean of El Fasher University’s medical college, attributed around 50 fatalities to COVID-19, but said it was still likely an undercount. Doctors in West and Central Darfur provinces also reported an unusual increase in deaths.
Dr. Abdullah Adam, a radiology doctor, said he knew of 47 acquaintances who died the past month after showing coronavirus symptoms in villages around Kabkabiya, near El-Fasher. Among them were two of his uncles, he said. One family he knew lost a brother and sister in the same week.
Some camps in the north saw 10 to 15 people a day dying the past week, compared to the normal rate of 5 to 10 a month, said Adam Regal, spokesman for a local organization that runs some camps.
“We’re losing a whole generation,” said Gamal Abdulkarim Abdullah, director of Zam Zam camp. He said he documented 70 dead the past week.
“The sharp mortality increase in Darfur is mostly linked to COVID-19, although not purely,” said Dr. El Magboul.


Turkiye to allow pro-Kurdish party to visit jailed militant leader

Updated 14 sec ago
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Turkiye to allow pro-Kurdish party to visit jailed militant leader

ANKARA: Turkiye has decided to allow parliament’s pro-Kurdish DEM Party to hold face-to-face talks with militant leader Abdullah Ocalan on his island prison, the party said on Friday, setting up the first such visit in nearly a decade.
DEM requested the visit last month, soon after a key ally of President Tayyip Erdogan expanded on a proposal to end the 40-year-old conflict between the state and Ocalan’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Ocalan has been serving a life sentence in a prison on the island of Imrali, south of Istanbul, since his capture 25 years ago.
Devlet Bahceli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party, made the call a month after suggesting that Ocalan announce an end to the insurgency in exchange for the possibility of his release.
Erdogan described Bahceli’s initial proposal as a “historic window of opportunity.” After the latest call last month, Erdogan said he was in complete agreement with Bahceli on every issue and that they were acting in harmony and coordination.
“To be frank, the picture before us does not allow us to be very hopeful,” Erdogan said in parliament. “Despite all these difficulties, we are considering what can be done with a long-range perspective that focuses not only on today but also on the future.”
Bahceli regularly condemns pro-Kurdish politicians as tools of the PKK, which they deny.
DEM’s predecessor party was involved in peace talks between Ankara and Ocalan a decade ago, last meeting him in April 2015. The peace process and a ceasefire collapsed soon after, unleashing the most deadly phase of the conflict.
DEM MPs Sirri Sureyya Onder and Pervin Buldan, who both met Ocalan as part of peace talks at the time, will travel to Imrali island on Saturday or Sunday, depending on weather conditions, the party said.
Turkiye and its Western allies designate the PKK a terrorist group. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the fighting, which in the past was focused in the mainly Kurdish southeast but is now centered on northern Iraq, where the PKK is based.
Growing regional instability and changing political dynamics are seen as factors behind the bid to end the conflict with the PKK. The chances of success are unclear as Ankara has given no clues on what it may entail.
Since the fall of Bashar Assad in Syria this month, Ankara has repeatedly insisted that the Kurdish YPG militia, which it sees as an extension of the PKK, must disband, asserting that the group has no place in Syria’s future.
The YPG is the main component of the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
In a Reuters interview last week, SDF commander Mazloum Abdi acknowledged the presence of PKK fighters in Syria for the first time, saying they had helped fight Daesh and would return home if a total ceasefire was agreed with Turkiye, a core demand from Ankara.
Authorities in Turkiye have continued to crack down on alleged PKK activities. Last month, the government replaced five pro-Kurdish mayors in southeastern cities for suspected PKK ties, in a move that drew criticism from DEM and others.

Jordan leads Arab condemnation of Gaza hospital burning by Israeli forces

Updated 39 min 35 sec ago
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Jordan leads Arab condemnation of Gaza hospital burning by Israeli forces

  • Actions of troops are a ‘heinous war crime’ and ‘blatant violation of international law and humanitarian law,’ Jordanian Foreign Ministry says
  • Qatar calls it a ‘dangerous escalation’ with potentially ‘dire consequences for the security and stability of the region’

LONDON: Jordan has described the actions of Israeli forces in clearing and burning one of the last hospitals that was still operating in northern Gaza as a “heinous war crime.”

Troops stormed the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia on Friday, forcing staff and patients from the building and setting fire to it.

Sufian Al-Qudah, a spokesperson for Jordan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the attack was a “blatant violation of international law and humanitarian law. Israel is also held accountable for the safety of the hospital’s patients and medical staff.”

Jordan categorically rejects the “systematic targeting of medical personnel and facilities,” he added, and this was an attempt to destroy facilities “essential to the survival of the people in the northern Gaza Strip.”

Al-Qudah urged the international community to put pressure on Israel to halt its attacks on civilians in Gaza.

The UAE foreign ministry also said the destruction of the hospital was “deplorable.”

The ministry statement “condemned and denounced in the strongest terms the Israeli occupation forces' burning of Kamal Adwan Hospital … and the forced evacuation of patients and medical personnel.”

Qatar denounced “in the strongest terms” the attack on the hospital as a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.

The country’s Foreign Ministry said it represented a “dangerous escalation of the ongoing confrontations, which threatens dire consequences for the security and stability of the region,” and called for the protection of the “hundreds of patients, wounded individuals and medical staff” from the hospital.


UN worker seriously hurt in Israeli Yemen strike moved to Jordan, WHO says

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus with a colleague injured in an Israeli airstrike on Sanaa airport. (Twitter)
Updated 27 December 2024
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UN worker seriously hurt in Israeli Yemen strike moved to Jordan, WHO says

  • WHO chief Tedros was at Sanaa airport with his team when Israel attacked

ZURICH: The UN worker hurt in an Israeli air strike on Yemen’s main international airport on Thursday suffered serious injuries and has been evacuated to Jordan for further treatment, the World Health Organization said on Friday.
Israel said it had struck multiple targets linked to the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen, including Sanaa International Airport, and Houthi media said at least six people had been killed.
“Attacks on civilians and humanitarians must stop, everywhere. #NotATarget,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X that showed him sitting in a plane looking across at what appeared to be the injured man.
Tedros was at the airport waiting to depart when the aerial bombardment took place that injured the man, who worked for the UN Humanitarian Air Service. A spokesperson for the WHO said the man had been seriously injured.


Tedros said he and the UN worker were now in Jordan.
The man underwent a successful surgical procedure prior to his evacuation for further treatment, Tedros said.
He had been in Yemen to negotiate the release of detained UN staff and to assess the humanitarian situation.

 


Jordan’s King Abdullah reaffirms support for Syria’s sovereignty, calls for Gaza ceasefire

Updated 27 December 2024
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Jordan’s King Abdullah reaffirms support for Syria’s sovereignty, calls for Gaza ceasefire

  • King in phone conversation with French president

AMMAN: King Abdullah II reaffirmed on Friday Jordan’s commitment to supporting Syria in building a free, independent, and fully sovereign state that reflected the aspirations of all its people.

In a phone conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron, the king emphasized the importance of Syria’s security, and stability for the Middle East region as a whole. He also reiterated Jordan’s firm stance against any violations of Syria’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, Jordan News Agency reported.

Syria faced nearly 14 years of devastating civil war before the fall of President Bashar Assad’s regime earlier this month following a swift takeover by militants led by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham.

The country remains fragmented, grappling with the challenges of rebuilding amid competing political and military influences.

The discussion between King Abdullah and Macron also addressed the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza.

The conflict, which erupted in the aftermath of a Hamas attack on Israeli territory on Oct. 7 last year, has led to a humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian enclave, with tens of thousands of lives lost and infrastructure heavily damaged.

King Abdullah called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a strengthened humanitarian response to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians trapped there.

He also stressed the urgent need for progress toward a just and comprehensive peace in the region, underscoring the two-state solution as the basis for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

King Abdullah highlighted the importance of sustained efforts to ensure the success of the ceasefire in Lebanon.


Syrian equestrian champ reveals 21 years of torture at hands of Assad regime

Updated 27 December 2024
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Syrian equestrian champ reveals 21 years of torture at hands of Assad regime

  • Adnan Kassar was friends with Bassel Assad until overshadowing him at a championship event in 1993
  • Kassar was detained, and his treatment worsened after Bassel’s death a year later

LONDON: A former champion equestrian has revealed the torture he suffered when he was detained by the Syrian regime after besting the older brother of former ruler Bashar Assad.

Adnan Kassar told Sky News he endured 21 years of imprisonment, during which he was physically and mentally abused, after Bassel Assad, his teammate at the 1993 International Equestrian Championship, became irritated at his performances.

The two had been good friends, but Kassar’s showing won his team the gold medal at the event on home soil in the port city of Latakia, after Bassel had produced a poor display.

“The crowd lifted me on their shoulders. It was a moment of pure joy, but for Bassel, it wasn’t the same. That day marked the beginning of my nightmare,” Kassar told Sky.

He was later arrested over what he called “fabricated” accusations and subjected to severe physical and psychological abuse.

“I was kept underground for six months, beaten constantly, and interrogated without end,” he said.

Bassel had originally been tipped to succeed his father, Hafez Assad, as Syria’s ruler. However, Bassel died in a car crash in 1994, propelling the younger Bashar to power.

For Kassar, though, Bassel’s death only made his situation more dire, as he was transferred to Sednaya Prison, where “the torture only got worse.”

Kassar said: “They blamed me for his death. Every year on the anniversary of his passing, the torture intensified.”

He was later sent to Tadmur Prison for seven-and-a-half years.

“They pierced my ear one morning and broke my jaw in the evening,” Kassar said. “For praying, they lashed me 1,000 times. My feet were torn apart, my bones exposed.”

Kassar was released in 2014 after a campaign of appeals by international human rights groups. For years, he resisted discussing his time in captivity for fear of reprisals but felt ready to speak after the fall of the Assad family.

“After years of imprisonment, torture, and injustice, the revolution finally toppled the dictatorial regime,” he said.