Famine could rip through Somalia as soon as April, UN warns

Somali children are seen within the Iftin Camp for the internally displaced people outside Baradere town, Gedo Region, Jubaland state, Somalia. (Reuters/File Photo)
Somali children are seen within the Iftin Camp for the internally displaced people outside Baradere town, Gedo Region, Jubaland state, Somalia. (Reuters/File Photo)
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Updated 14 February 2023
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Famine could rip through Somalia as soon as April, UN warns

Famine could rip through Somalia as soon as April, UN warns
  • Adam Abdelmoula, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for the country, told Arab News the current drought is unprecedented in country’s history
  • The UN is seeking $2.6 billion in donations to fund aid for 8 million Somalis, amid calls for donors to “front-load their support”

NEW YORK CITY: The UN is seeking $2.6 billion to help 8 million people in Somalia as the country once again finds itself on the brink of widespread famine, as a result of overlapping crises including prolonged drought, conflict, insecurity, high food and water costs, and mass displacement.

Though the attention of the world has gradually returned to the country following similar dire warnings last year, this has not resulted in additional funding for the humanitarian response there.

Adam Abdelmoula, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, described the drought currently ravaging the African nation as “truly unprecedented” and said more than 700,000 people are expected to experience catastrophic hunger.

“The 2011 famine that killed 360,000 people was the result of three consecutive failed rainy seasons,” he told Arab News. “Now, we have already sailed past five failed rainy seasons — and that should tell you where are we at the moment.

“Don’t listen to those who tell you that this is the worst drought in 40 years; this is the worst drought in Somalia’s recorded history, period.”

After the famine in 2011, the international community said “never again,” Abdelmoula pointed out, adding: “If we truly want to honor that promise, there is no time to lose. Every delay in assistance is a matter of life or death for families in need.”

The 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan for Somalia, unveiled last week by the UN, its humanitarian partners and the Somali government, includes the appeal for $2.6 billion in donations to help more than 8 million people in dire need of help and protection for their survival. That is almost half the population of the country, and women and children account for 80 percent of those in need.

Launching the appeal in the Somali capital Mogadishu, Abdelmoula said 3.8 million people in the country are internally displaced, one of the highest figures in the world. The majority were driven from their homes by conflict and climate shocks.

Such high levels of displacement, he said, exacerbate already limited access to basic services. An estimated 8 million people, for example, lack access to safe water supplies, sanitation and hygiene services at a time when disease outbreaks are on the rise compared with recent years.

Meanwhile, about 2 million Somali children under the age of five are likely to face acute malnutrition, including more than half a million likely to be severely acutely malnourished. Such high rates of acute malnutrition increase the risk of diseases and death from preventable causes such as cholera, measles and acute diarrhea. Less than a third of people in areas affected by drought have access to medical care.

More than 6 million people are likely to face high levels of acute food insecurity through March this year, said Abdelmoula, and the number is expected to increase to 8.3 million between April and June amid an anticipated reduction in funding for humanitarian assistance.

Although humanitarian aid contributions helped prevent the famine threshold from being surpassed last year, as had been projected, Abdelmoula pointed out that “the distinction between a declared famine and what millions of Somalis are already experiencing is truly meaningless.”

He added: “They are already going hungry. Children are starving. The underlying crisis has not improved and even more appalling outcomes are only temporarily averted.

“Famine is a strong possibility from April to June this year, and of course beyond, if humanitarian assistance is not sustained and if the April-to-June rains underperform as currently forecast.”

The 2022 humanitarian response plan for Somalia was only 67 percent funded, Abdelmoula said.

“And I hasten to say that 80 percent of that funding came from a single donor country, and that’s the United States,” he added. “And the US made it clear, again and again, that that was a one-off.”

The EU provided 10 percent of the funding, and the rest of the world contributed the remaining 10 percent.

“With higher and more severe needs in 2023, and the continuing risk of famine, we can and must do better,” Abdelmoula said.

Somalia is one of the countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change and is ill-equipped to cope with the consecutive droughts that have depleted the country’s water supplies, resulting in crop failures as a result of which agricultural production has fallen to 70 percent below average.

The Somalis affected by these successive droughts are “the human face of the global climate emergency,” Adelmoula added.

Salah Jama, the deputy prime minister of the Federal Government of Somalia, said the country’s people “are paying the price for a climate emergency they did very little to create.”

Getting aid to those most in need remains a tremendous challenge. Some areas are hard to reach because of poor roads infrastructure. Others are under the control of Al-Shabab, an uncompromising, unpopular group with links to Al-Qaeda. Its deadly insurgency against the federal government has resulted in humanitarian aid convoys being attacked.

In a vicious cycle, the scarcity exacerbated by the activities of Al-Shabab means more desperate young Somalis are vulnerable to recruitment by the group.

“Unfortunately, we have very, very limited access to areas under Al-Shabaab control,” Abdelmoula told Arab News. “We try to use proxies at times — community leaders, some community-based (nongovernmental organizations) and so on — but that is very sporadic and very inconsistent.”

However, the Somali government recently regained control of some areas that had been under Al-Shabaab control and, Abdelmoula said: “We came close to getting a glimpse of what the situation looks like in areas that are still under Al-Shabab control, and compared to the communities that we have been dealing with, and the caseload of the humanitarian interventions, these people are in a much, much worse shape than those that were already identified to be at the brink of famine in the (southern) Bay region.”

It is estimated there are about 700,000 people living in areas that remain under Al-Shabaab control, according to the UN.

While humanitarian groups focus on life-saving activities to avert famine, UN officials also emphasize the need to invest in livelihoods, resilience, the development of infrastructure, climate adaptation efforts, and durable solutions for the internally displaced, to help break free from a cycle of chronically recurring humanitarian crises and perpetual dependency.

“I have consistently been saying that what we see in Somalia is equally a development crisis, (not only) a humanitarian crisis, and that there are no humanitarian solutions for this protracted crisis — there are only developmental interventions that can ween the country and its people from this endless dependency on humanitarian handouts,” Abdelmoula said.

“And while most of the donors agree, we still haven’t seen that level of development assistance that will enable the country to adapt with the accelerating and intensifying climate change, and to enable the communities to rely on themselves through income- and employment-generation interventions. I haven’t seen that happen yet.”

He called for the $2.6 billion in required humanitarian aid to be accompanied by financing for “resilience, development and climate adaptation.”

“Humanitarian organizations, local communities and government authorities have ramped up responses and reached 7.3 million people in 2022 but they need additional resources and unhindered access to people in need,” Abdelmoula added, as he urged donors to step up and “front-load their support.”


A suspected bomb blast kills at least 3 Christian worshippers in southern Philippines

Members of police Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) stand guard along a popular market street in Manila on June 1, 2022. (AFP)
Members of police Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) stand guard along a popular market street in Manila on June 1, 2022. (AFP)
Updated 6 min 32 sec ago
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A suspected bomb blast kills at least 3 Christian worshippers in southern Philippines

Members of police Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) stand guard along a popular market street in Manila on June 1, 2022. (AFP)
  • The explosion occurred during a Catholic Mass in the gym, DZBB radio reported

MANILA, Philippines: A powerful explosion believed caused by a bomb ripped through a Catholic Mass and killed at least three people and wounded several others Sunday in a predominantly Muslim city in the southern Philippines, officials said.
The morning Mass was underway in a gymnasium at the state-run Marawi State University in Marawi city when the explosion happened, causing panic among dozens of worshippers and leaving the victims bloodied and sprawled on the ground, said Taha Mandangan, the security chief of the sprawling state-run campus.
At least two of the wounded were fighting for their lives, Mandangan said.
“This is clearly an act of terrorism. It’s not a simple feud between two people. A bomb will kill everybody around,” Mandangan told The Associated Press by telephone.
Army troops and police immediately cordoned off the area and were conducting an initial investigation and checking security cameras for any indication of who may have been responsible for the attack. Security checkpoints were set up around city.
There was no clear indication yet who was responsible for the explosion but police said they were not ruling out the involvement of Muslim militants, who still have a presence in the region despite years of military and police offensives.
The mosque-studded city came under attack from militants aligned with the Daesh group in 2017, leaving more than 1,100 killed, mostly militants, before the five-month siege was quelled by Filipino forces backed by airstrikes and surveillance planes deployed by the United States and Australia.
The southern Philippines is the homeland of minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation and the scene of decades-old separatist rebellion.
The largest armed insurgent group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, signed a 2014 peace deal with the government considerably easing decades of fighting. But a number of smaller armed groups rejected the peace pact and press on with bombings and other attacks while evading government offensives.

 


Breaches by Iran-affiliated hackers spanned multiple US states, federal agencies say

Breaches by Iran-affiliated hackers spanned multiple US states, federal agencies say
Updated 03 December 2023
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Breaches by Iran-affiliated hackers spanned multiple US states, federal agencies say

Breaches by Iran-affiliated hackers spanned multiple US states, federal agencies say
  • Since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, the group has expanded and accelerated targeting Israeli critical infrastructure, said Check Point’s Sergey Shykevich

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania: A small western Pennsylvania water authority was just one of multiple organizations breached in the United States by Iran-affiliated hackers who targeted a specific industrial control device because it is Israeli-made, US and Israeli authorities say.
“The victims span multiple US states,” the FBI, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, as well as Israel’s National Cyber Directorate said in an advisory emailed to The Associated Press late Friday.
They did not say how many organizations were hacked or otherwise describe them.
Matthew Mottes, the chairman of the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa, which discovered it had been hacked on Nov. 25, said Thursday that federal officials had told him the same group also breached four other utilities and an aquarium.
Cybersecurity experts say that while there is no evidence of Iranian involvement in the Oct. 7 attack into Israel by Hamas that triggered the war in Gaza they expected state-backed Iranian hackers and pro-Palestinian hacktivists to step up cyberattacks on Israeli and its allies in its aftermath. And indeed that has happened.
The multiagency advisory explained what CISA had not when it confirmed the Pennsylvania hack on Wednesday — that other industries outside water and water-treatment facilities use the same equipment — Vision Series programmable logic controllers made by Unitronics — and were also potentially vulnerable.
Those industries include “energy, food and beverage manufacturing and health care,” the advisory says. The devices regulate processes including pressure, temperature and fluid flow.
The Aliquippa hack promoted workers to temporarily halt pumping in a remote station that regulates water pressure for two nearby towns, leading crews to switch to manual operation. The hackers left a digital calling card on the compromised device saying all Israeli-made equipment is “a legal target.”
The multiagency advisory said it was not known if the hackers had tried to penetrate deeper into breached networks. The access they did get enabled “more profound cyber physical effects on processes and equipment,” it said.
The advisory says the hackers, who call themselves “Cyber Av3ngers,” are affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which the US designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 2019. The group targeted the Unitronics devices at least since Nov. 22, it said.
An online search Saturday with the Shodan service identified more than 200 such Internet-connected devices in the US and more than 1,700 globally.
The advisory notes that Unitronics devices ship with a default password, a practice experts discourage as it makes them more vulnerable to hacking. Best practices call for devices to require a unique password to be created out of the box. It says the hackers likely accessed affected devices by “exploiting cybersecurity weaknesses, including poor password security and exposure to the Internet.”
Experts say many water utilities have paid insufficient attention to cybersecurity.
In response to the Aliquippa hack, three Pennsylvania congressmen asked the US Justice Department in a letter to investigate. Americans must know their drinking water and other basic infrastructure is safe from “nation-state adversaries and terrorist organizations,” US Sens. John Fetterman and Bob Casey and US Rep. Chris Deluzio said. Cyber Av3ngers claimed in an Oct. 30 social media post to have hacked 10 water treatment stations in Israel, though it is not clear if they shut down any equipment.
Since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, the group has expanded and accelerated targeting Israeli critical infrastructure, said Check Point’s Sergey Shykevich. Iran and Israel were engaged in low-level cyberconflict prior to the Oct. 7. Unitronics has not responded to the AP queries about the hacks.
The attack came less than a month after a federal appeals court decision prompted the EPA to rescind a rule that would have obliged USpublic water systems to include cybersecurity testing in their regular federally mandated audits. The rollback was triggered by a federal appeals court decision in a case brought by Missouri, Arkansas and Iowa, and joined by a water utility trade group.
The Biden administration has been trying to shore up cybersecurity of critical infrastructure — more than 80 percent of which is privately owned — and has imposed regulations on sectors including electric utilities, gas pipelines and nuclear facilities. But many experts complain that too many vital industries are permitted to self-regulate.

 


Ex-president barred from leaving Ukraine amid alleged plan to meet with Hungary’s Viktor Orban

Ex-president barred from leaving Ukraine amid alleged plan to meet with Hungary’s Viktor Orban
Updated 03 December 2023
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Ex-president barred from leaving Ukraine amid alleged plan to meet with Hungary’s Viktor Orban

Ex-president barred from leaving Ukraine amid alleged plan to meet with Hungary’s Viktor Orban
  • Officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have been monitoring safety at the Zaporizhzhia plant, which is one of the world’s 10 biggest nuclear power stations

KYIV, Ukraine: Former President Petro Poroshenko was denied permission to leave Ukraine for a planned meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Ukraine’s security service said Saturday.
Poroshenko announced Friday that he had been turned away at the border despite previously receiving permission from Parliament to leave the country. Under martial law, Ukrainian men between 18 and 60 years of age are not allowed to leave the country without special approval.
The 58-year-old, who lost his re-election bid in 2019 to current Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, said that he had planned to meet with US House Speaker Mike Johnson, and the Polish parliament during his trip.
But security officials said that Poroshenko had also agreed to meet Orban, who has previously praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and refused to support Kyiv’s bid for EU accession. In a statement on social media, they said such talks would make Poroshenko a “tool in the hands of the Russian special services.”
Poroshenko, who called his experience at the border an “attack on unity”, is yet to comment on the allegation that he planned to meet Orban.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was left on “the verge of a nuclear and radiation accident” Saturday after it was unable to draw power from two of the lines connecting it to the local energy grid, the country’s nuclear energy operator said.
It said that the plant switched to diesel generators to stop the plant from overheating before off-site power was restored by Kyiv.
Russia occupied the Zaporizhzhia plant in the early stages of the war. Over the past year, the station has become a focal point of concern for international observers, with both Moscow and Kyiv accusing each other of shelling the plant.
In a statement on social media, Petro Kotin, head of Ukraine’s nuclear energy operator, accused Moscow of “incorrect, erroneous, and often deliberately risky operation of the equipment” at the site.
The Associated Press was unable to independently verify the claims.
Officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have been monitoring safety at the Zaporizhzhia plant, which is one of the world’s 10 biggest nuclear power stations.
Although the plant’s six reactors have been shut down for months, it still needs power and qualified staff to operate crucial cooling systems and other safety features.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russia launched 11 Iranian-made Shahed drones and one guided cruise missile overnight Saturday, military officials said. The missile and all but one of the drones were reportedly destroyed by Ukrainian air defenses.
The Russian Defense Ministry also said that it had shot down two Ukrainian C-200 rockets over the Sea of Azov.

 


Tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian supporters stage events across Britain

Tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian supporters stage events across Britain
Updated 03 December 2023
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Tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian supporters stage events across Britain

Tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian supporters stage events across Britain

LONDON: Tens of thousands of people across the UK held protests on Saturday as part of a “Day of Action” against the resumption of Israel’s renewed attack on Gaza following a seven-day pause in fighting, organizers said. 

“Israel’s decision to resume its bombardment of Gaza flies in the face of international law, which prohibits collective punishment and attacks on civilians,” said Ben Jamal, the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign — one of the organizers of the nationwide call. 

“Every humanitarian agency on the ground has indicated that the scale of destruction already wrought by Israel has pushed Gaza to the brink of catastrophe, where deaths from disease and lack of medical services could outstrip the current casualty figures,” he added.

“In that context not only is it unconscionable that Israel would renew its attacks, (but) it is also shameful and unacceptable that UK political leaders would give their support, tacitly or explicitly.”

At least 193 Palestinians have been killed since the cease-fire ended on Friday, according to Gazan health officials, adding to the more than 15,000 Palestinians killed since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas following a surprise attack on Oct. 7 in southern Israel.

“Ordinary people across the UK will come out again to show the vast majority of them support a permanent cease-fire, they will show their solidarity with Palestinians who are experiencing unbearable suffering, (and) they will also demand the root causes are not forgotten — Israel’s decades-long military occupation of Palestinian territories and its system of apartheid against Palestinians.

“We demand justice for the Palestinian people – their right to self-determination and to live in freedom, dignity and with equality,” he added.

PSC has organized weekly national marches in London since the war began, some of which organizers said drew around 800,000 people and was among the nations biggest demonstrations in history. The next scheduled national march is set to be held on Dec. 9.

Various events were held around the country as part of the call, including cease-fire rallies and vigils in places such as Brighton, Hull in the north of England, Coventry in the center, Canterbury in the southeast, and the Welsh capital Cardiff.


Attacker stabs German tourist to death in Paris

Attacker stabs German tourist to death in Paris
Updated 03 December 2023
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Attacker stabs German tourist to death in Paris

Attacker stabs German tourist to death in Paris
  • A police source said the attacker was known for psychiatric disorders

PARIS: A person known to the French authorities as a radical Islamist with mental health troubles stabbed a German tourist to death and wounded two people in central Paris on Saturday before being arrested, officials said.
The attack took place close to the Eiffel Tower during a busy late weekend night and came with the country on its highest alert for attacks as tensions rise against the background of the war between Israel and Hamas.
“We will not give in to terrorism,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne wrote on X, formerly Twitter, after the attack.
French anti-terror prosecutors said that they would now take on the investigation.
The attacker was known to authorities as a radical Islamist and was being treated for mental illness, a police source told AFP.
He shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest“) before being arrested, the source added.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said the attacker is French, born in 1997, and has been arrested in an investigation into murder and attempted murder.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin who visited the the scene by the River Seine’s Bir Hakeim bridge said the man had already been sentenced in 2016 to “four years in prison” for planning another attack which he failed to carry out.
“A man attacked a couple who were foreign tourists. A German tourist who was born in the Philippines died from the stabbing,” he said.
A taxi driver who witnessed the scene intervened, Darmanin said. The attacker then crossed the Seine attacking others and injuring one with a hammer, while police chased in pursuit.
Police used a taser to neutralize the man who was then arrested.
“He had threatened them very violently... he will now have to answer for his actions before justice,” Darmanin said.
The suspect told police he could not stand Muslims being killed in “Afghanistan and Palestine,” according to the minister.
Joseph S., 37 years old, a supermarket manager who asked not to give his last name, witnessed the scene, as he sat in a bar.
He heard screams and people shouting “help, help” as they ran. A man wielding an object attacked a man who had fallen down, and within 10 minutes the police arrived, he told AFP.
The country has suffered several attacks by Islamist extremists, including the November 2015 suicide and gun attacks in Paris claimed by the Daesh group in which 130 people were killed.
There had been a relative lull in recent years, even as officials have warned that the threat remains.
But tensions have risen in France, home to large Jewish and Muslim populations, following Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 and Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
Security in Paris is also under particular scrutiny as it gears up to host the 2024 Summer Olympic Games.
In October, teacher Dominique Bernard was killed in the northern French town of Arras by a young radicalized Islamist from Russia’s Caucasus region.