UNITED NATIONS: Russia on Thursday reprimanded the head of the UN children’s agency UNICEF for not providing a “weighty argument for her refusal” to brief the Security Council on children in Gaza — a meeting requested by Russia.
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell, an American, had briefed the 15-member council on children in Ukraine “at the drop of a hat” in December, during the US presidency of the council.
“So it would appear that for UNICEF children in Gaza are less important than children in Ukraine,” Nebenzia said.
Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine in February 2022 and has been at war since then. The war in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas began in October 2023 and a ceasefire took effect on Sunday.
“The refusal of UNICEF’s head to brief the Security Council about the horrific tragedy linked to the death of tens of thousands of children in Gaza is a flagrant step, which deserves our most serious censure,” Nebenzia told the council.
Russell is at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland with a focus on addressing humanitarian crises and was unable to adjust her schedule to brief the Security Council, said a UNICEF spokesperson.
“Ms. Russell had offered the Director of Emergencies to deliver her statement on her behalf,” the UNICEF spokesperson said. “The UNICEF Executive Director has briefed the Security Council several times on the situation of children in Gaza and appreciates the council’s focus on children impacted by war.”
The Security Council has met dozens of times to discuss the war in Gaza. Israel’s armed and security forces, Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants, and Russia’s armed forces are all on the UN global list of offenders for killing and maiming children.
Nebenzia also accused Washington on Thursday of some responsibility for the deaths of children in Gaza after the US used its council veto to shield Israel during the war. He also said the US ignored Russian calls for a meeting on Gazan children in December.
Acting US Ambassador Dorothy Shea rejected Nebenzia’s accusations.
“The idea that the United States is responsible for the terrible suffering there is just unacceptable to us and we reject it in its totality,” she told the council.
UN aid chief Tom Fletcher briefed the Security Council meeting on Thursday via video from Stockholm. He bluntly assessed the past 15 months of war in Gaza: “Children have been killed, starved, and frozen to death.”
“They have been maimed, orphaned, separated from their family. Conservative estimates indicate that over 17,000 children are without their families in Gaza,” he said. “A generation has been traumatized.”
Under the ceasefire, the United Nations and others are carrying out a surge of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Russia accuses UNICEF head of caring more about kids in Ukraine than Gaza
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Russia accuses UNICEF head of caring more about kids in Ukraine than Gaza
- Demands a ‘most serious censure’ on UNICEF head for ‘refusing’ to brief UN Security Council on Gaza children's condition
- UNICEF says head was in Davos, focused on humanitarian crises; US rejects Russian accusation is it responsible for Gaza deaths
US Secretary of State Rubio backs ‘inclusive’ transition in Syria in call with Turkiye
- Rubio’s comments signal a consistency with his predecessor Antony Blinken, who used similar language as he called on Syria’s new leaders to protect minority rights and not pose a threat to neighboring countries
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for an inclusive transition in Syria after the fall of leader Bashar Assad, in a call with powerbroker Turkiye, the State Department said Thursday.
Rubio’s comments signal a consistency with his predecessor Antony Blinken, who on a trip to the region last month used similar language as he called on Syria’s new leaders to protect minority rights and not pose a threat to neighboring countries.
In a call with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan that took place Wednesday, Rubio “highlighted the need for an inclusive transition in Syria,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said.
Rubio also called for “ensuring that the new government prevents Syria from becoming a source for international terrorism, and denying foreign malign actors the opportunity to exploit Syria’s transition for their own objectives,” she said.
Assad, allied with Iran and Russia, had ruthlessly crushed an uprising that erupted in 2011 but was swiftly deposed last month in a lightning raid by Turkish-backed rebels formerly affiliated with Al-Qaeda.
Turkish-backed fighters have been battling Kurdish forces in Syria, who allied with the United States in the battle against the Daesh (IS) extremist group but who Ankara associates with Kurdish militants at home.
M23 rebels battling Congo’s army close in on Goma as panic spreads among city’s 2 million people
- The rebel group has advanced significantly in recent weeks, closing in on Goma, which has around 2 million people
- M23 is one of about 100 armed groups that have been vying for a foothold in mineral-rich eastern Congo, along the border with Rwanda
GOMA, Congo: Panic spread in eastern Congo’s main city on Thursday, with M23 rebels steadily inching closer to Goma and seizing a nearby town as they battle the Congolese army. Bombs were heard going off in the city’s distant outskirts and hundreds of wounded civilians were brought in to the main hospital from the area of the fighting.
The rebel group has advanced significantly in recent weeks, closing in on Goma, which has around 2 million people and is a regional hub for security and humanitarian efforts. On Thursday, the rebels took Sake, a town only 27 kilometers (16 miles) from Goma and one of the last main routes into the provincial capital still under government control, according to the UN chief.
M23 is one of about 100 armed groups that have been vying for a foothold in mineral-rich eastern Congo, along the border with Rwanda, in a decadeslong conflict that has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.
More than 7 million people have been displaced by the fighting. Earlier this month, M23 captured the towns of Minova, Katale and Masisi, west of Goma.
“The people of Goma have suffered greatly, like other Congolese,” an M23 spokesperson, Lawrence Kanyuka, said on X. “M23 is on its way to liberate them, and they must prepare to welcome this liberation.”
M23 seized Goma in 2012 and controlled it for over a week.
As news of fighting spread, schools in Goma sent students home on Thursday morning.
“We are told that the enemy wants to enter the city. That’s why we are told to go home,” Hassan Kambale, a 19-year-old high school student, said. “We are constantly waiting for the bombs.”
Congo, the United States and UN experts accuse Rwanda of backing the M23, mainly composed of ethnic Tutsis who broke away from the Congolese army over a decade ago.
Rwanda’s government denies the claim but last year admitted that it has troops and missile systems in eastern Congo to safeguard its security, pointing to a buildup of Congolese forces near the border. UN experts estimate there are up to 4,000 Rwandan forces in Congo.
On Wednesday, Congo’s minister of communication, Patrick Muyaya, told French broadcaster France 24 that war with Rwanda is an “option to consider.”
Late Thursday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned “in the strongest terms, the renewed offensive launched by the 23 March Movement (M23),” including the “seizure of Sake.”
“This offensive has a devastating toll on the civilian population and heightened the risk of a broader regional war,” Guterres’ statement read. He also urged “all parties to uphold human rights and international humanitarian law.”
Earlier in the day, Congolese authorities claimed that the military pushed back an attack from the “Rwandan army” on Sake. The Associated Press was unable to verify if Rwanda’s army took part in the offensive.
“The population is in panic. The M23 now control large parts of the town,” said Léopold Mwisha, the president of civil society of the area of Sake.
Guterres said he was “deeply troubled” by the most recent reports about the “presence of Rwandan troops on Congolese soil and continued support to the M23.”
The US Embassy in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, in a notice warned of “an increase in the severity of armed conflict near Sake” and advised US nationals in North Kivu province, which includes Goma, to be on the alert in case they need to leave their homes on short notice.
The United Kingdom also issued a travel advisory that said M23 now controls Sake and urged British nationals to leave Goma while roads remain open.
Many Sake residents have joined the more than 178,000 people who have fled the M23 advance in the last two weeks.
The CBCA Ndosho Hospital in Goma was stretched to the limit, with hundreds of newly wounded on Thursday.
Thousands escaped the fighting by boat on Wednesday, making their way north across Lake Kivu and spilling out of packed wooden boats in Goma, some with bundles of their belongings strapped around their foreheads.
Neema Matondo said she fled Sake during the night, when the first explosions started to go off. She recounted seeing people around her torn to pieces and killed.
“We escaped, but unfortunately” others did not, Matondo told the AP.
Mariam Nasibu, who fled Sake with her three children, was in tears — one of her children lost a leg, blown off in the relentless shelling.
“As I continued to flee, another bomb fell in front of me, hitting my child,” she said, crying.
Smog chokes Baghdad as oil-fired factories belch out smoke
In winter, a thick smog frequently envelops the city of nine million people as the fumes belched out by its many oil-fired factories are trapped by a layer of cold air.
The stench of sulfur permeates some districts, where brick and asphalt factories run on heavy fuel oil, taking advantage of generous state subsidies in the world’s sixth biggest oil producer.
In a bid to tackle the worsening air quality, authorities recently shut down dozens of oil-fired factories and instructed others to phase out their use of heavy fuel oil.
“Every time I went to the doctor he told me to stop smoking. But I don’t smoke,” Zubaidi told AFP.
When his doctor finally realized that Zubaidi lived just meters from the Dora power plant in south Baghdad, he told him its emissions were the likely cause of his asthma.
Power plants and refineries spew thick grey smoke over several areas of Baghdad.
“We can’t go up to our roofs because of the fumes,” Zubaidi said.
“We appealed to the prime minister, the government and parliament. Lawmakers have come to see us but to no avail,” the 53-year-old complained.
He is not the only victim of air pollution. Many of his neighbors suffer from chronic asthma or allergies, he said.
Waste incineration and the proliferation of private generators in the face of patchy mains supply also contribute significantly to Baghdad’s air pollution.
In 2023, the air monitoring site IQAir ranked Iraq as the sixth most polluted country in terms of air quality.
Levels of the cancer-causing PM2.5 pollutants, microparticles small enough to enter the bloodstream through the lungs, are seven to 10 times the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline values.
IQAir warned that exposure to PM2.5 “leads to and exacerbates numerous health conditions, including but not limited to asthma, cancer, stroke and lung disease.”
It found that air pollution levels in Baghdad were “unhealthy for sensitive groups.”
According to the US embassy, air quality in the capital frequently enters the red zone, leading to “health effects,” particularly for vulnerable groups.
In October, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani ordered a committee to investigate the causes of the “odorous sulfur emissions” so that they can be stopped.
Environment ministry spokesperson Amir Ali attributed the pollution to “industrial activities near the capital” — particularly the brickworks and asphalt plants in the Nahrawan industrial zone in southeast Baghdad.
There lie “the largest number of factories responsible for the emissions,” he said.
Ali also blamed private generators and refineries, including in Dora.
The pollution was exacerbated by “weather conditions, shifts in temperature, the direction of the wind, and increased humidity,” his ministry said.
In December, authorities announced the closure of 111 brickworks “due to emissions” that breach environmental standards, along with 57 asphalt plants in the Nahrawan industrial zone.
The industry ministry has also instructed brickworks to phase out their use of heavy fuel oil within 18 months and replace it with liquefied natural gas.
The government has banned waste incineration inside and outside landfills and has said it will improve “fuel quality at Dora refinery and address gas emissions and wastewater discharges.”
Iraq is one of the world’s largest oil producers, and sales of crude oil account for 90 percent of state revenues, so its transition to renewable fuels remains a distant goal.
Environmental activist Husam Sobhi urged authorities to keep up their efforts to phase out heavy fuel oil.
“It is difficult for a country like Iraq to let go of oil but we can use better quality oil than heavy fuel oil,” Sobhi said.
He also called on planning authorities to put a stop to the city’s sprawl into the surrounding countryside.
“Baghdad is in dire need of a green belt which would serve as a lung for the city to breathe,” he said.
Australian Open: Keys upsets Swiatek and will face Sabalenka in the final
- Keys: I’m still trying to catch up to everything that’s happening
- Sabalenka beat good friend Paula Badosa 6-4, 6-2 earlier Thursday
MELBOURNE: When Madison Keys finally finished off her 5-7, 6-1, 7-6 (10-8) upset of No. 2 Iga Swiatek in a high-intensity, high-quality Australian Open semifinal on Thursday night, saving a match point along the way, the 29-year-old American crouched on the court and placed a hand on her white hat.
She had a hard time believing it all. The comeback. What Keys called an “extra dramatic finish.” The victory over five-time Grand Slam champion Swiatek, who’d been on the most dominant run at Melbourne Park in a dozen years. And now a chance for Keys to play in her second Grand Slam final, a long wait after being the 2017 US Open runner-up.
“I’m still trying to catch up to everything that’s happening,” said the 19th-seeded Keys, who will face No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, the two-time defending champion, for the trophy Saturday. “I felt like I was just fighting to stay in it. ... It was so up and down and so many big points.”
Just to be sure, Keys asked whether Swiatek was, indeed, one point from victory, acknowledging she really had no idea. Yes, Madison, Swiatek was that close to ending things while serving at 6-5, 40-30, but missed a backhand into the net, then eventually getting broken by double-faulting, sending the contest to a first-to-10, win-by-two tiebreaker.
“I felt like I blacked out there at some point,” Keys said, “and was out there running around.”
Whatever she was doing, it worked. Keys claimed more games in the semifinal than the 14 total that Swiatek dropped in her five previous matches over the past two weeks.
“It was a matter of one or two balls,” said Swiatek, who lost in the Australian Open semifinals two years ago, too. “Madison was kind of brave.”
Sabalenka beat good friend Paula Badosa 6-4, 6-2 earlier Thursday. Sabalenka, a 26-year-old from Belarus, can become the first woman since 1999 to complete a threepeat.
“If she plays like this,” the 11th-seeded Badosa said, “I mean, we can already give her the trophy.”
Keys might have something to say about that.
Still, Sabalenka won her first major championship at Melbourne Park in 2023, and she since has added two more — in Australia a year ago and at the US Open last September.
The last woman to reach three finals in a row at the year’s first Grand Slam tournament was Serena Williams, who won two from 2015-17. Martina Hingis was the most recent woman to win three titles in a row in Melbourne, doing it from 1997-99.
“I have goosebumps. I’m so proud of myself,” said Sabalenka, whose 4-1 head-to-head record against Keys includes a win in the 2023 US Open semifinals.
Swiatek had not lost a single service game since the first round, but was broken three times by Keys in the first set alone and eight times in all.
That included each of Swiatek’s first two times serving, making clear right from the get-go this would not be her usual sort of day. And while Swiatek did eke out the opening set, she was overwhelmed in the second, trailing 5-0 before getting a game.
This was the big-hitting Keys at her very best. She turns 30 next month and, at the suggestion of her coach, former player Bjorn Fratangelo — who also happens to be her husband — decided to try a new racket this season, an effort both to help her with generating easy power but also to relieve some strain on her right shoulder.
It’s certainly paid immediate dividends. Keys is now on an 11-match winning streak, including taking the title at a tuneup event in Adelaide.
She was good enough to get through this one, which was as tight as can be down the stretch.
“At the end, I feel like we were both kind of battling some nerves. ... It just became who can get that final point and who can be a little bit better than the other one,” Keys said. “And I’m happy it was me.”
Sabalenka trailed 2-0, 40-love at the start but quickly figured things out, especially once Rod Laver Arena’s retractable roof was shut in the first set because of a drizzle. She straightened her strokes and overpowered Badosa, who eliminated No. 3 Coco Gauff to reach her first major semifinal.
“She started to be very, very aggressive,” said Badosa, who thought about retiring last year while dealing with a stress fracture in her back. “Everything was working.”
Sabalenka and Badosa did their best to avoid any eye contact for much of the evening, whether up at the net for the coin toss or when they crossed paths at changeovers.
When their match was over, they met for a lengthy hug.
During Sabalenka’s on-court interview, she joked about taking Badosa — who by then was sitting in a hallway, her head bowed — on a shopping spree to make things up to her, paying for whatever the Spaniard wants.
Told what Sabalenka said, Badosa noted: “It’s going to be something really expensive.”
’Living in a cage’: West Bank checkpoints proliferate after Gaza truce
- According to the Palestinian Wall Resistance Commission, 146 iron gates were erected around the West Bank after the Gaza war began
TAYBEH, Palestinian Territories: Father Bashar Basiel moved freely in and out of his parish in the occupied West Bank until Israeli troops installed gates at the entrance of his village Taybeh overnight, just hours after a ceasefire began in Gaza.
“We woke up and we were surprised to see that we have the iron gates in our entrance of Taybeh, on the roads that are going to Jericho, to Jerusalem, to Nablus,” said Basiel, a Catholic priest in the Christian village north of Ramallah.
All over the West Bank, commuters have been finding that their journey to work takes much longer since the Gaza ceasefire started.
“We have not lived such a difficult situation (in terms of movement) since the Second Intifada,” Basiel told AFP in reference to a Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.
He said he was used to the checkpoints, which are dotted along the separation barrier that cuts through much of the West Bank and at the entrances to Palestinian towns and cities.
But while waiting times got longer in the aftermath of the October 2023 Hamas attack that sparked the Gaza war, now it has become almost impossible to move between cities and villages in the West Bank.
Left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Israeli authorities ordered the military to operate dozens of checkpoints around the West Bank during the first 42 days of the ceasefire.
According to the Palestinian Wall Resistance Commission, 146 iron gates were erected around the West Bank after the Gaza war began, 17 of them in January alone, bringing the total number of roadblocks in the Palestinian territory to 898.
“Checkpoints are still checkpoints, but the difference now is that they’ve enclosed us with gates. That’s the big change,” said Anas Ahmad, who found himself stuck in traffic for hours on his way home after a usually open road near the university town of Birzeit was closed.
Hundreds of drivers were left idling on the road out of the city as they waited for the Israeli soldiers to allow them through.
The orange metal gates Ahmad was referring to are a lighter version of full checkpoints, which usually feature a gate and concrete shelters for soldiers checking drivers’ IDs or searching their vehicles.
“The moment the truce was signed, everything changed 180 degrees. The Israeli government is making the Palestinian people pay the price,” said Ahmad, a policeman who works in Ramallah.
Israeli military spokesman Nadav Shoshani did not comment on whether there had been an increase in the number of checkpoints but said the military used them to arrest wanted Palestinian militants.
“We make sure that the terrorists do not get away but the civilians have a chance to get out or go wherever they want and have their freedom of movement,” he said in a media briefing on Wednesday.
Basiel said that now, when the gates are closed, “I have to wait, or I have to take another way” into Taybeh, a quiet village known for its brewery.
He said that on Monday people waited in their cars from 4:00 p.m. to 2:00 am while each vehicle entering the village was meticulously checked.
Another Ramallah area resident, who preferred not to be named for security reasons, compared his new environment to that of a caged animal.
“It’s like rabbits living in a cage. In the morning they can go out, do things, then in the evening they have to go home to the cage,” he said.
Shadi Zahod, a government employee who commutes daily between Salfit and Ramallah, felt similarly constrained.
“It’s as if they’re sending us a message: stay trapped in your town, don’t go anywhere,” he told AFP.
“Since the truce, we’ve been paying the price in every Palestinian city,” he said, as his wait at a checkpoint in Birzeit dragged into a third hour.
Before approving the Gaza ceasefire, Israel’s security cabinet reportedly added to its war goals the “strengthening of security” in the West Bank.
Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said in a statement on Tuesday that Israel “is merely shifting its focus from Gaza to other areas it controls in the West Bank.”
A 2019 academic paper by Jerusalem’s Applied Research Institute estimated that at the time Palestinians lost 60 million work hours per year to restrictions.
But for Basiel, the worst impact is an inability to plan even a day ahead.
“The worst thing that we are facing now, is that we don’t have any vision for the near future, even tomorrow.”
