In Yemen’s north, Houthis face virus with outright denial

The funeral of Yahya Al-Shami, assistant supreme commander of the Houthi forces, who died due to COVID-19. Yemen’s internationally recognized government reported around 7,200 confirmed cases, including 1,391 deaths in areas under its control. (File/AFP)
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Updated 13 August 2021
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In Yemen’s north, Houthis face virus with outright denial

  • Doctors are forced to falsify the cause of death on official papers, vaccines are seen with fear
  • The Houthi rebels have imposed an information blackout on confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19

CAIRO: For three days last month, Nasser joined hundreds of others jammed into emergency rooms in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, searching for a hospital bed for his mother, who was struggling to breathe. By the time one became available, his mother was dead.

But her death certainly won’t figure in the country’s coronavirus numbers. Officially, there have been only four virus cases and one death in Yemen’s north, according to the Houthi rebel authorities who control the capital and surrounding provinces.

It’s not just a struggling health care system that’s to blame for the unaccounted for deaths. In interviews with The Associated Press, more than a dozen doctors, aid workers, Sanaa residents and relatives of those believed to have died from the virus said the Houthi authorities are approaching the pandemic with such outright denial that it threatens to further endanger the already vulnerable population.

They say doctors are forced to falsify the cause of death on official papers, vaccines are seen with fear, and there are no limits or guidelines on public gatherings, much less funerals.

Nasser’s mother, like many others, was buried without any precautions against the virus and the funeral was attended by hundreds. A few days later, an aunt, in her 40s, died, and two other relatives got sick and were hospitalized for over a week.

“Certainly, my aunt died from corona,” said Nasser, who asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of reprisal by the Houthi authorities. “But no one tells us the truth.”

The deaths came as Sanaa and other areas of northern Yemen have been experiencing a third deadly coronavirus surge, according to doctors and residents. But it’s difficult to know how many have been sickened or died, beyond anecdotes from residents. The Houthi rebels have imposed an information blackout on confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19. Testing remains sparse, or hushed.

Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, has already been devastated by six years of civil war. The fighting pits the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels against the internationally recognized government, which is aided by a Saudi-led coalition.

The war has killed more than 130,000 people, displaced millions and created the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. Aerial bombings and intense ground fighting have destroyed the country’s infrastructure, leaving half the country’s health facilities dysfunctional. About 18 percent of Yemen’s 333 districts have no doctors at all. Water and sanitation systems have collapsed. Many families can barely afford one meal a day.

Amid the fighting came the COVID-19 pandemic, adding to the war’s deadly toll.

“There was a big wave of COVID-19 and they (the Houthis) knew that very well,” said a UN health official in Yemen, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of undermining negotiations with the rebels on vaccinations and other issues. “Isolation centers were full; the numbers were doubled three or four times.”

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Houthis have not treated it with seriousness and action, said Afrah Nasser, Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch. They even have hindered international efforts to help fight it in their areas, she said.

“Each party in Yemen has its own strategy, but the Houthi one is destructive,” she said. “It’s a recipe for disaster.”

Dr. Adham Ismail, the World Health Organization representative in Yemen, said it was “a big achievement” to get any coronavirus vaccine at all into Houthi-controlled territories. Initially, authorities banned the shots, and then agreed to allow in only 1,000 doses. They have not held any campaigns encouraging people to get vaccinated.

The Houthis’ opposition to vaccines forced doctors and other residents to seek their shots in Yemeni government-held areas. Many, including aid workers working in Houthi-held areas, registered online and traveled secretly to cities like Aden, Lahj and Taiz for vaccination.

Yemen received its first 360,000-dose shipment of the AstraZeneca vaccine from the United Nations-backed COVAX initiative in March. The shipment was the first batch of 1.9 million doses that Yemen is to receive through the end of the year. A vaccination campaign was launched in government-held areas in April.

Yemen’s internationally recognized government has reported around 7,200 confirmed cases, including 1,391 deaths in areas under its control. The actual numbers, however, are believed much higher mainly because of limited testing.

A spokesman for the rebels did not answer calls seeking comment. But last year, Youssef Al-Hadhari, a spokesman for the Houthi health ministry, told the AP: “We don’t publish the numbers to the society because such publicity has a heavy and terrifying toll on people’s psychological health.”

Meanwhile, the Houthis continue holding public events, including recruitment gatherings and funerals attended by thousands for senior military officials killed in battle, as virus cases spike. All are held with no precautionary measures against the virus.

Over a dozen doctors, aid workers and residents said cases in the north are rising rapidly, with more frequent funerals, apparently of virus victims, though doctors said they’ve been warned not to confirm the causes of the deaths.

All spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the rebels.

Doctors and other health care workers said the 24 isolation centers in the north have been full since mid-July. One health care worker in the Palestine hospital said dozens of patients have come every day with coronavirus-like symptoms, most in their 30s and 40s. He said many are being told to isolate at home for lack of other options.

In Sanaa cemeteries, grave diggers have found it difficult to find space for new burial plots. At one cemetery in Jarraf, one digger estimated that over 30 people were buried every day in the past two months, many of them women and elderly.

In the northern province of Ibb, two health care workers at the Jibla hospital said the facility receives nearly 50 people with Covid-19-like symptoms every day. The hospital lacks testing capacities, so doctors usually depend on other means to diagnose.

When patients die at the Jibla hospital, doctors don’t tell relatives they are suspected to have been infected by the virus, for fear of being targeted afterwards. The Houthis have appointed security supervisors at hospitals to control the flow of information between medical staff and patients’ families, according to health care workers.

Earlier this year, two senior Houthi officials died, apparently among the country’s most high-profile virus victims. Yahia Al-Shami, spent over a month in an isolation center in Sanaa before he succumbed to the virus in April and Zakaria Al-Shami, transportation minister in the Houthi-run government, also caught the coronavirus and died in March, according to doctors who treated them.

The Houthi rebel authorities announced both of their deaths — but there was no mention of the cause.


Iraqis sentenced to prison in $2.5-bn corruption case

Updated 4 min 59 sec ago
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Iraqis sentenced to prison in $2.5-bn corruption case

  • A criminal court in Baghdad specializing in corruption cases issued the prison sentences ranging from three to 10 years, a statement from Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said

BAGHDAD: An Iraqi court on Monday sentenced to prison former senior officials, a businessman and others for involvement in the theft of $2.5 billion in public funds — one of Iraq’s biggest corruption cases.
The three most high-profile individuals sentenced — businessman Nour Zuhair, as well as former prime minister Mustafa Al-Kadhemi’s cabinet director Raed Jouhi and a former adviser, Haitham Al-Juburi — are on the run and were tried in absentia.
The scandal, dubbed the “heist of the century,” has sparked widespread anger in Iraq, which is ravaged by rampant corruption, unemployment and decaying infrastructure after decades of conflict.
A criminal court in Baghdad specializing in corruption cases issued the prison sentences ranging from three to 10 years, a statement from Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said.
Thirteen people received sentences on Monday, according to member of Parliament Mostafa Sanad.
Most of them, 10, are from Iraq’s tax authority and include its former director and deputy, he added on his Telegram channel.
Iraq revealed two years ago that at least $2.5 billion was stolen between September 2021 and August 2022 through 247 cheques that were cashed by five companies.
The money was then withdrawn in cash from the accounts of those firms.
A judicial source told AFP that some tax officials charged were in detention, without detailing how many.
Businessman Zuhair was sentenced to 10 years in prison, according to the judiciary statement.
He was arrested at Baghdad airport in October 2022 as he was trying to leave the country, but released on bail a month later after giving back more than $125 million and pledging to return the rest in instalments.
The wealthy businessman was back in the news in August after he reportedly had a car crash in Lebanon, following an interview he gave to an Iraqi news channel.
Juburi, the former prime ministerial adviser, received a three-year prison sentence. He also returned $2.6 million before disappearing, a judicial source told AFP.
Kadhemi’s cabinet director Raed Jouhi, also currently outside Iraq, was sentenced to six years in prison — alongside “a number of officials involved in the crime,” according to the judiciary’s statement.
Corruption is rampant across Iraq’s public institutions, but convictions typically target mid-level officials or minor players and rarely those at the top of the power hierarchy.
 

 


11 killed in Kurdish-led attacks in north Syria: war monitor

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11 killed in Kurdish-led attacks in north Syria: war monitor

  • Seven Turkiye-backed militants were also killed in the attack and in an operation by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that control swathes of northeast Syria.

BEIRUT: The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Monday 11 people including civilians were killed in attacks by a Kurdish-led force on positions of Turkiye-backed militants in north Syria.
“A woman, her two children and a man were killed... in the bombing of a military position... used by Ankara-backed factions for human smuggling operations to Turkiye,” the Britain-based monitor said.
It said seven Turkiye-backed militants were also killed in that incident and in an operation by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that control swathes of northeast Syria.
SDF special forces infiltrated a Turkiye-backed group’s military position and killed three militants, said the monitor with a network of sources inside Syria.
The SDF also booby-trapped a military position as they withdrew, in an attack that killed another four pro-Turkiye militants but also four civilians including a woman and her two children, the Observatory said.
On Sunday, 15 Ankara-backed Syrian militants were killed after the SDF infiltrated their territory, the monitor reported earlier.
The SDF is a US-backed force that spearheaded the fighting against the Daesh group in its last Syria strongholds before its territorial defeat in 2019.
It is dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), viewed by Ankara as an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Turkish troops and allied armed factions control swathes of northern Syria following successive cross-border offensives since 2016, most of them targeting the SDF.


Sudan women facing ‘epidemic of sexual violence’: UN

Updated 46 min 43 sec ago
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Sudan women facing ‘epidemic of sexual violence’: UN

PORT SUDAN: The United Nations humanitarian chief raised the alarm on Monday over an “epidemic of sexual violence” against women in war-torn Sudan, saying the world “must do better.”
“I feel ashamed that we have not been able to protect you, and I feel ashamed for my fellow men for what they have done,” Tom Fletcher, who heads the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said on his first visit to Port Sudan.
The Red Sea city has become Sudan’s de facto capital since April 2023, when Khartoum was engulfed by war between the regular military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The war has claimed tens of thousands of lives, displaced more than 11 million people and created what the UN says is the worst humanitarian crisis in recent memory.
Nearly 26 million people — around half the population — face the threat of mass starvation, as both warring sides have been accused of using hunger as a weapon of war.
During his visit, Fletcher met army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and discussed efforts to “increase the delivery of aid across borders and across conflict lines.”
Aid workers and humanitarian agencies say Burhan’s army-aligned government has enforced severe bureaucratic hurdles to their work.
At an event in a Port Sudan school to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Fletcher said the world “must do better” by the women of Sudan, who have been exposed to systematic sexual violence.
The UN’s independent international fact-finding mission for Sudan last month documented escalating sexual violence, including “rape, sexual exploitation and abduction for sexual purposes as well as allegations of enforced marriages and human trafficking.”
“The sheer scale of sexual violence we have documented in Sudan is staggering,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, chair of the fact-finding mission.
“The situation faced by vulnerable civilians, in particular women and girls of all ages, is deeply alarming and needs urgent address,” he added.


EU offers Morocco €200 million in quake reconstruction aid

Updated 25 November 2024
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EU offers Morocco €200 million in quake reconstruction aid

  • Relations between Morocco and the EU are strained after the European Court of Justice annulled fishing and agricultural deals between the two parties over products from disputed Western Sahara

RABAT: The European Union plans to offer Morocco 200 million euros ($210 million) to help with post-earthquake reconstruction, EU commissioner for neighborhood and enlargement Oliver Varhelyi said on Monday, as the two parties navigate judicial headwinds.
The 6.8 magnitude quake, Morocco’s deadliest since 1960, struck on Sept. 8, 2023, killing more than 2,900 people and damaging vital infrastructure. Morocco said it would invest In a post-earthquake reconstruction plan that includes the upgrade of infrastructure in five years.
The EU will increase its total quake reconstruction aid to Morocco to 1 billion euros, Varhelyi told a press conference in Rabat following talks with foreign minister Nasser Bourita.
Morocco was a “reliable” partner, receiving 5.2 billion euros in EU investments over the last five years, he said.
Relations between Morocco and the EU are strained after the European Court of Justice annulled fishing and agricultural deals between the two parties over products from disputed Western Sahara.
The long-frozen conflict, dating back to 1975, pits Morocco, which considers Western Sahara its own territory, against the Algeria-backed Polisario Front independence movement, which seeks a separate state there.
Following the verdict, the European Council and the Commission said they attached “high value” to relations with Morocco.
The EU’s relationship with Morocco needs to be protected from judicial harassment, Bourita said, adding that “there will be no partnerships at the expense of Morocco’s territorial integrity.”
The challenges facing Morocco-EU relations contrast with the stronger economic and political ties Rabat has forged with Madrid and Paris, after the two former colonial powers backed a Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara. ($1 = 0.9499 euros)

 


‘Netanyahu is not Dreyfus,’ Palestinian envoy tells UN Security Council

Updated 25 November 2024
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‘Netanyahu is not Dreyfus,’ Palestinian envoy tells UN Security Council

  • Riyad Mansour rejects Israeli PM’s claim of antisemitism over ICC arrest warrant, says ‘either Gaza becomes the graveyard of international law or land of its resurrection’
  • US envoy warns annexation of West Bank and settlements in Gaza would create ‘new obstacles for Israel’s integration in the region’

NEW YORK CITY: The warrant issued last week by the International Criminal Court for the arrest of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has “nothing to do with his faith and everything to do with his crimes,” the Palestinian envoy to the UN told the Security Council on Monday.

Riyad Mansour urged council members to stand up to what he described as Netanyahu’s “diversions and distortions, to his smearing, his threats and his attacks.”

Netanyahu has denounced the ICC decision as “antisemitic,” comparing it to the Dreyfus affair in France more than a century ago. Alfred Dreyfus, a French army officer of Jewish descent, was wrongfully convicted in 1894 of treason based on fabricated evidence.

“No, Netanyahu is not Dreyfus,” Mansour told the Security Council. “The ICC, the ICJ (International Court of Justice), this council and the General Assembly, the secretary-general and the United Nations are not antisemitic, and Netanyahu’s efforts to frame efforts to uphold international law as antisemitic must be firmly rebuked.”

The council must “act now to restore primacy to international law, to the humanitarian and human rights laws that Israel is shredding to the detriment of all,” he added.

He warned that the “genocide” in Gaza is transforming the Middle East for generations to come, with “the gravest” repercussions for the region and the wider world.

“This fire will devour everything in its path if it is not urgently stopped,” Mansour said, and so states are faced with a “quite simple” choice: defend the rule of international law or defend “the massacres perpetrated by this Israeli government.”

He called on politicians who have “difficulties making the right choice” to stop “playing political games with our people’s lives,” and added: “Our children should not be sacrificed for the sake of your political calculations and ambitions.”

Palestinians in Gaza are bracing themselves to endure another winter living in makeshift tents, besieged and bombed, without any of the essential infrastructure required to sustain life, while famine continues to loom over the war-ravaged enclave, Mansour warned.

“How much more suffering must they endure?” he asked. “Their agony must be brought to an end and life and hope must be restored. Israel’s war machine must be stopped in Palestine and in Lebanon. It is sowing the conditions of insecurity and hatred for decades.”

He urged council members not to allow “a solvable political conflict to be transformed into an eternal religious conflict. This would have terrible, unimaginable consequences for our region and the world.”

He added: “The fate of our region is being determined in Gaza: either Gaza becomes the graveyard of international law or the land of its resurrection.”

Robert Wood, the deputy US ambassador to the UN, told fellow council members that Washington remains opposed to the annexation of the West Bank and the construction of settlements in Gaza.

Such actions would breach international law, he said, “sow the seeds of further instability and create new obstacles to Israel’s full integration into the region.” He also expressed concern about the “increasing extremist-settler violence in the West Bank.”

But Wood reiterated that the US rejects the ICC’s decision to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and blames Hamas for the failure to reach a ceasefire agreement. He added that the militant group must not be “let off the hook.”

Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s deputy permanent representative, said: “The USA only demands, and continues to demand, that we all put pressure on Hamas,” yet it is “clear” that Israel’s plan is “to create yet another irreversible fact on the ground: a scorched, depopulated Gaza that has been emptied of Palestinians.”

He added: “How many more people need to die for Gaza to at last see peace? Or will the USA obstruct this until all the Palestinians have been exterminated and the question of the two-state solution falls away by itself?”

Moscow “will continue to insist on the adoption of the most decisive measures to stop the bloodshed in Gaza,” Polyanskiy said.