KAFR NASEH: In a run-down north Syria camp, children displaced by the country’s 13-year war played and splashed in volunteer-run mobile swimming pools that provided much-needed relief from the sweltering summer heat.
Volunteers from the Smile Younited charity barely had any time to finish setting up the three pools in a busy square surrounded by tents before children of all ages jumped in, dancing along to songs blasted on loudspeakers.
The pools at Kafr Naseh camp, in the Aleppo countryside, provided rare entertainment to young boys and girls whose lives have been scarred by war and poverty.
Mohammad Ezzedine, 38, said he was thrilled to see his five children so happy.
“I hope they will come back every week... because it’s hot and the kids need to distract themselves and have fun” because “they live under pressure inside a confined camp,” he said.
The children “had never been to a pool before. The most we could do was put them in a plastic tub and fill it with water” when it is available to cool down in the summer, Ezzedine added.
More than five million people, most of them displaced, live in areas outside government control in Syria’s north and northwest, the UN says, and many rely on aid to survive.
As the conflict drags on, a lack of international funding has severely undercut the provision of basic services including water, waste disposal and sanitation in displacement camps outside government control in Syria’s north and northwest.
Aiding communities
Residents of Kafr Naseh camp say they have not had access to free, clean water in a year and a half.
“The old and the young want water because it is a lifeline... The camps are thirsty,” said 65-year-old Habiba Hamdush, who has been living in the camp for six years.
Children in the camp “are deprived of everything... Some of them have never seen a pool before and don’t even know how to swim,” she said.
But now, they can “enjoy the pools, which are a source of happiness and relief from the heat,” she said as she watched 15 of her grandchildren splash about.
Many of them were very young when her family was displaced from neighboring Idlib province and “grew up in the camp thirsty, hungry, living in tents and exposed to the sun,” she said.
Syria’s civil war has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions since it began in 2011 with the repression of anti-government protests.
When the children are done swimming, they sit around plastic tables sipping juice and eating fruit — food provided by the charity.
“They don’t know what a trip to the pool is, so we brought the pool to them,” said Ayman Abu Taym, 30, who heads the team of volunteers.
“Children are not just in need of aid, they also need activities like playing and swimming,” he added.
Mobile pools offer relief from heat to children in north Syria camps
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Mobile pools offer relief from heat to children in north Syria camps
- The pools at Kafr Naseh camp, in the Aleppo countryside, provided rare entertainment to young boys and girls whose lives have been scarred by war and poverty.
Gaza ceasefire deal unlikely in Biden’s term, WSJ reports citing US officials
WASHINGTON: US officials now believe that a Gaza ceasefire deal between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas is not expected before the end of President Joe Biden’s term in January, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
The newspaper cited top-level officials in the White House, State Department and Pentagon without naming them.
Washington has previously said that 90 percent of that agreement to secure a ceasefire and release of hostages had been reached but gaps remained over Israeli presence in the Philadelphi corridor on Gaza’s border with Egypt and over specifics on release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Macron says ‘diplomatic path exists’ in Lebanon
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that a “diplomatic path exists” in Lebanon, where fears of an all-out war between Hezbollah and Israel spiked after deadly explosions of hand-held devices.
War is “not inevitable” and “nothing, no regional adventure, no private interest, no loyalty to any cause merits triggering a conflict in Lebanon,” Macron said in a video to the Lebanese people posted on social media.
Sweden charges woman with genocide, crimes against humanity in Syria
- Daesh ‘tried to annihilate the Yazidi ethnic group on an industrial scale,’ prosecutor Reena Devgun says
DENMARK: Swedish authorities have charged a 52-year-old woman associated with the Daesh group with genocide, crimes against humanity, and serious war crimes against Yazidi women and children in Syria — in the first such case of a person to be tried in the Scandinavian country.
Lina Laina Ishaq, who’s a Swedish citizen, allegedly committed the crimes from August 2014 to December 2016 in Raqqa, the former de facto capital of the self-proclaimed Daesh caliphate and home to about 300,000 people.
The crimes “took place under Daesh rule in Raqqa, and this is the first time that Daesh attacks against the Yazidi minority have been tried in Sweden,” senior prosecutor Reena Devgun said in a statement.
“Women, children, and men were regarded as property and subjected to being traded as slaves, sexual slavery, forced labor, deprivation of liberty, and extrajudicial executions,” Devgun said.
When announcing the charges, Devgun said that they were able to identify the woman through information from UNITAD, the UN team investigating atrocities in Iraq.
Daesh “tried to annihilate the Yazidi ethnic group on an industrial scale,” Devgun said.
In a separate statement, the Stockholm District Court said the prosecutor claims the woman detained a number of women and children belonging to the Yazidi ethnic group in her residence in Raqqa and “allegedly exposed them to, among other things, severe suffering, torture or other inhumane treatment as well as for persecution by depriving them of fundamental rights for cultural, religious and gender reasons contrary to general international law.”
According to the charge sheet, Ishaq is suspected of holding nine people, including children, in her Raqqa home for up to seven months and treating them as slaves. She also abused several of those she held captive.
The charge sheet said that Ishaq, who denies wrongdoing, is accused of having molested a baby, said to have been one month old at the time, by holding a hand over the child’s mouth when he screamed to make him shut up.
She is also suspected of having sold people to Daesh, knowing they risked being killed or subjected to serious sexual abuse.
In 2014, Daesh stormed Yazidi towns and villages in Iraq’s Sinjar region and abducted women and children. Women were forced into sexual slavery, and boys were taken to be indoctrinated in jihadi ideology.
The woman earlier had been convicted in Sweden and was sentenced to three years in prison for taking her 2-year-old son to Syria in 2014, an area that Daesh then controlled.
The woman claimed she had told the child’s father that she and the boy were only going on holiday to Turkiye. However, once in Turkiye, the two crossed into Syria and the Daesh-run territory.
In 2017, when Daesh’s reign began to collapse, she fled from Raqqa and was captured by Syrian Kurdish troops. She managed to escape to Turkiye, where she was arrested with her son and two other children she had given birth to in the meantime, with a Daesh foreign fighter from Tunisia.
She was extradited from Turkiye to Sweden.
Before her 2021 conviction, the woman lived in the southern town of Landskrona.
The court said the trial was planned to start Oct. 7 and last approximately two months.
Large parts of the trial are to be held behind closed doors.
Israel violated global child rights treaty in Gaza, UN committee says
GENEVA: A UN committee has accused Israel of severe breaches of a global treaty protecting children’s rights, saying its military actions in Gaza had a catastrophic impact on them and are among the worst violations in recent history.
Palestinian health authorities say 41,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its military campaign in response to cross-border attacks by Hamas on Oct. 7. Of those killed in Gaza, at least 11,355 are children, Palestinian data shows, and thousands more are injured.
“The outrageous death of children is almost historically unique. This is an extremely dark place in history,” said Bragi Gudbrandsson, vice chair of the Committee.
“I don’t think we have seen a violation that is so massive before as we’ve seen in Gaza. These are extremely grave violations that we do not often see,” he said.
Israel, which ratified the treaty in 1991, sent a large delegation to the UN hearings in Geneva between September 3-4.
They argued that the treaty did not apply in Gaza or the West Bank and that it was committed to respecting international humanitarian law. It says its military campaign in Gaza is aimed at eliminating Hamas.
The committee praised Israel for attending but said it “deeply regrets the state party’s repeated denial of its legal obligations.”
The 18-member UN Committee monitors countries’ compliance with the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child — a widely adopted treaty that protects them from violence and other abuses.
In its conclusions, it called on Israel to provide urgent assistance to thousands of children maimed or injured by the war, provide support for orphans, and allow more medical evacuations from Gaza.
The UN body has no means of enforcing its recommendations, although countries generally aim to comply.
During the hearings, the UN experts also asked many questions about Israeli children, including details about those taken hostage by Hamas, to which Israel’s delegation gave extensive responses.
Spanish prime minister, Palestinian leader urge Mideast de-escalation
MADRID: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Thursday called for a de-escalation of the conflict in the Middle East.
“Today the risk of escalation is once more increasing in a dangerous way” in Lebanon, said Sanchez, at a news conference withvisitingPalestinianPresident Mahmoud Abbas.
“So we must again make a fresh appeal for restraint,for a de-escalation and for peaceful coexistence between countries, in the name of peace,” he added.
Sanchez was speaking to journalists after more than an hour’s talks with Abbas.
Since the Gaza war began, Sanchez has positioned himself as a champion of the Palestinian cause within the EU.
His socialist government has increasingly taken highly critical positions toward Israel’s conduct of itscampaignagainstHamas,rivalto the Fatah party.
“The international community and Europe cannot remain impassive in the face of the suffering of thousands of innocents, largely women and children,” he added.
Israel’s military offensive has killed at least 41,272 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to data provided by the Health Ministry. The UN has acknowledged these figures as reliable.
Urging a two-state solution, long a cornerstone of international attempts to end the decades-long conflict, Sanchez said that a Palestinian nation “living side by side with the state of Israel” was the only way to “bring stability to the region.”
He pointed out that this is Abbas’s first visit to Spain since Madrid decided to recognize the state of Palestine on May 28. Ireland and Norway took the same decision in May. “Why is this a good thing? Because Palestine exists and has the right to have its state,” the premier added.
While Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, the Fatah party chaired by Abbas controls the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.
