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Fire engulfs police facility in Egypt’s Ismailia

Special Fire engulfs police facility in Egypt’s Ismailia
The blaze ripped through the multistory police headquarters in the Suez Canal province of Ismailia. (Mimi Eroq via Reuters)
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Updated 02 October 2023
Gobran Mohamed
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Fire engulfs police facility in Egypt’s Ismailia

Fire engulfs police facility in Egypt’s Ismailia
  • Dozens injured before firefighters contained the blaze after several hours
  • Ministry of Health and Population has increased the preparedness of hospitals in Ismailia Governorate to receive injured people
Updated 02 October 2023
Gobran Mohamed
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CAIRO: A massive fire broke out on Monday at a police facility in northeastern Egypt, injuring at least 38 people before firefighters could extinguish the blaze several hours later, authorities said.

Officers from the Egyptian Armed Forces and the Suez Canal Authority also took part in fire and rescue operations at the Ismailia Security Directorate headquarters, northeast of Cairo.

Cooling operations for the building are underway, officials said.

The Ministry of Health and Population has increased the preparedness of hospitals in Ismailia Governorate to receive injured people.

Hossam Abdel Ghaffar, a ministry spokesperson, said that 50 fully equipped ambulances were sent to the site.

The spokesperson said all emergency medications and blood groups were available in the governorate’s hospitals.

Abdel Ghaffar said ambulances provided emergency treatment to 12 injured people at the site.

The official said 26 other injured people — 24 cases of suffocation and two cases of burns — were transferred to Ismailia Medical Complex.

Seven injured people were discharged from the medical complex after recovering.

Egypt’s Interior Minister Mahmoud Tawfik inspected the site of the blaze.

He directed a committee of consultants to determine the cause of the fire and review the structural safety of the building to restore it to working condition as soon as possible.

The minister demanded that all aspects of care be provided to the injured until their complete recovery.

A team from the Ismailia Public Prosecution visited the site to conduct inspections and question witnesses, as well as those injured in hospitals.

An official statement on the fire that broke out in the Ismailia Security Directorate building has yet to be issued.

Ismailia Gov. Sherif Fahmy Bishara visited the injured and said that full medical care should be provided to them.

Topics: Egypt Ismailia Mahmoud Tawfik

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Fighting rages in Gaza as Palestinians hope for a pause for polio vaccinations

Fighting rages in Gaza as Palestinians hope for a pause for polio vaccinations
Updated 26 sec ago
Reuters
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Fighting rages in Gaza as Palestinians hope for a pause for polio vaccinations

Fighting rages in Gaza as Palestinians hope for a pause for polio vaccinations
  • UN hopes to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza starting September 1
  • Benjamin Netanyahu denies Israel plans for general humanitarian truce
Updated 26 sec ago
Reuters
CAIRO/GAZA: Palestinians in Gaza were waiting on Thursday to see if there would be a pause in fighting to allow a polio vaccination campaign to begin, as the conflict raged across the besieged enclave, killing at least 20 people.
The United Nations is preparing to vaccinate an estimated 640,000 children in Gaza, where the World Health Organization confirmed on Aug. 23 that at least one baby has been paralyzed by the type 2 poliovirus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
The UN, which called for a humanitarian truce earlier this month, hopes to begin the vaccination campaign on Sept. 1, said Juliette Touma, communications director of UNRWA, the UN Palestinian refugee agency.
The World Health Organization named the baby as Abdul-Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan. He will turn one year old on Sept. 1.
His mother Nivin Abu Al-Jidyan said she feared for her son after she was told by health officials they could do little to help him.
“I was shocked that my son got this disease amid the war and the closure of border crossings, under these conditions and lack of medicine for him, it’s a shock. Would he remain like this?” Abu Al-Jidyan said on Thursday.
“He is my only baby boy. It’s his right to travel and be treated; it’s his right to walk, run and move like before...It is unfair that he stays thrown in the tent without care or attention,” she said from a tent in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
At Nasser Hospital, in the southern city of Khan Younis, Umm Eliane Baker fears her 19-month-old daughter may be vulnerable to polio due to ill health brought on by malnutrition.
She hopes her baby will be vaccinated soon, but said she is worried about moving safely in an area where there have been repeated Israeli strikes.
“I cannot walk in the street and get bombed, or have something happen to my daughter, or have a targeted (attack). I need a truce, a ceasefire so I can give my daughter this injection (vaccine),” she said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week denied media reports Israel was preparing for a generalized humanitarian truce, saying that a more limited plan had been presented.
“These are not pauses in the fighting to administer polio vaccines but only the allocation of certain places in the Gaza Strip,” he said in a statement.
Senior Hamas official Izzat El-Reshiq reiterated the group’s support for the UN and international organizations’ initiative for an urgent humanitarian truce across the enclave to allow the polio vaccination campaign.
He described Netanyahu’s statement as an attempt to thwart the process by refusing the UN call.
FAMILY ‘CONSUMED’ BY FIRE
On Thursday, Israeli forces continued to bombard areas across the Gaza Strip in their battle against Hamas-led militants. Palestinian health officials said Israeli military strikes have so far killed at least 20 people.
One strike on a house in Gaza City killed eight Palestinians, including children, they said, while three others were killed when an Israeli missile hit a motorcycle in Rafah, near the border with Egypt.
A neighbor of the bombed Gaza City house said they had managed to lower a ladder into the building to rescue a family trapped inside, but had only managed to extract one young girl.
“After that, the fire consumed them and we could not reach them,” he said.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7 when Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on the enclave has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while also displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies.

Iran’s president calls for investigation into case of death in custody

Iran’s president calls for investigation into case of death in custody
Updated 5 min 40 sec ago
Reuters
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Iran’s president calls for investigation into case of death in custody

Iran’s president calls for investigation into case of death in custody
  • Forensic pathologists carried out follow-ups to determine the cause of death of the accused
  • Deceased was arrested on Aug. 24 following an altercation and tortured to death on the same day – rights group
Updated 5 min 40 sec ago
Reuters

DUBAI: Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian has ordered an investigation into the death in custody of a defendant in the northern city of Lahijan, state media reported on Thursday.
“Following the tragic incident in Lahijan, the president ordered the interior minister to form a committee to investigate all aspects of this incident and report its results to the cabinet as soon as possible,” the head of government public relations Elias Hazrati said.
Five policemen were arrested by the judiciary in relation to the case, according to the judiciary’s Mizan news agency, which did not reveal the deceased’s name, the charges he was facing, or the date on which he died.
“Following the violation of a citizen’s rights, necessary follow-ups were carried out and defendants related to the case were imprisoned based on a temporary arrest warrant,” Lahijan’s prosecutor, Ebrahim Ansari, said according to Mizan.
Ansari added that forensic pathologists carried out follow-ups to determine the cause of death of the accused, without providing additional information.
Iranian activist rights group Hengaw reported that the deceased, who it identified as 36-year-old Mohammad Mirmousavi, was arrested on Aug. 24 following an altercation and tortured to death on the same day.
Hengaw said this was the seventh case of a death in custody since the start of the year. Reuters could not verify this allegation.
A blurred video was circulated on social media showing the lacerated back of a topless man. Reuters could not verify the authenticity of the video.
The respect of citizens’ rights, including women and minorities, was one of the electoral promises of the relatively moderate Pezeshkian, who won the presidency in July.
In 2022, the death in custody of young Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for flouting Iran’s strict hijab laws, sparked months of nationwide protests in what became a major challenge to the Islamic Republic.

Topics: Iran Masoud Pezeshkian

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Iraq army says downed Turkish drone over northern city

Iraq army says downed Turkish drone over northern city
Updated 6 min 37 sec ago
Reuters
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Iraq army says downed Turkish drone over northern city

Iraq army says downed Turkish drone over northern city
  • Initial investigation of the debris showed it was a Turkish military armed drone
  • The drone fell in the center of Kirkuk, igniting a fire near some houses, but caused no casualties
Updated 6 min 37 sec ago
Reuters

BAGHDAD: The Iraqi military said it downed a Turkish drone over the northern city of Kirkuk on Thursday, as Ankara kept up its operations against Kurdish militants inside Iraq.
Falling debris damaged a house in the city center, police and army officials told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
There were no reports of any direct casualties but the police official said a carpenter working on a nearby building site had been admitted to hospital after a fall.
“A Turkish drone which penetrated Iraqi airspace has been shot down,” the deputy air defense commander for Kirkuk, General Abdel Salam Ramadan, told a press conference at the site of the downing.
The aircraft had come “from the direction of Sulaimaniyah,” second city of the Kurdish autonomous region to the north, Ramadan said.
Ethnically mixed Kirkuk and its surrounding oil fields do not form part of the autonomous region but are directly administered by the federal government in Baghdad.
Turkiye has maintained dozens of military bases in northern Iraq for the past quarter of a century as part of its campaign against militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Its troops routinely carry out operations against PKK targets but it comments on them only sporadically.
The Iraqi federal government discreetly outlawed the PKK as a “banned organization” in March and earlier this month agreed a military cooperation deal with Ankara that will see joint training and command centers set up in the fight against the militants.
The leftist group, which has waged a deadly on-off insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, is blacklisted as a “terrorist organization” by Ankara and its Western allies.

Topics: Iraq Kirkuk

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Two Guards killed in ‘gas leak’ in central Iran: media

Two Guards killed in ‘gas leak’ in central Iran: media
Updated 56 min 14 sec ago
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Two Guards killed in ‘gas leak’ in central Iran: media

Two Guards killed in ‘gas leak’ in central Iran: media
  • Their death came after a “gas leak incident on Wednesday night” in a Guards’ workshops in the central province of Isfahan
Updated 56 min 14 sec ago
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TEHRAN: Two Iranian Revolutionary Guards were killed in a “gas leak” in a Guards’ workshop in the center of the country, local media reported Thursday.
“Lt. Col. Mokhtar Morshedi and Captain Mojtaba Nazari were martyred,” Fars news agency reported, citing a statement from the Revolutionary Guards.
It said their death came after a “gas leak incident on Wednesday night” in a Guards’ workshops in the central province of Isfahan, without providing further details.
Earlier, the official IRNA news agency had reported that “one person was martyred, and 10 others were injured due to a gas leak.”
Iran has recorded a number of previous cases involving deaths and hospitalizations due to gas leaks.
In January of last year, an explosion suspected to have been caused by a gas leak at a building in northwestern Iran killed six members of the same family.
And in June 2022, over 130 people were hospitalized with respiratory difficulties following a chemical leak at a factory in the southern city of Firuzabad.

Topics: Iran

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24 people missing after floods tore through a northern Yemen village

24 people missing after floods tore through a northern Yemen village
Updated 29 August 2024
AP
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24 people missing after floods tore through a northern Yemen village

24 people missing after floods tore through a northern Yemen village
  • Heavy rains over the past few days pounded the Melhan district in Al-Mahwit province
Updated 29 August 2024
AP

CAIRO: Floodwaters swept through a village in northern Yemen, inundating homes and shops and leaving at least 24 people missing, authorities said Wednesday.
Heavy rains over the past few days pounded the Melhan district in Al-Mahwit province, triggering floods that caved in seven homes and four shops, according to a statement by Yemen’s Houthis.
Yemen was already the poorest Arab nation before it was plunged into civil war in 2014, when Iran-backed Houthis took control of the capital, Sanaa, and much of the country’s north, forcing the government to flee to the south.
Seasonal monsoon rains in the late summer often turn into flooding in Yemen, but there are indications that the country is experiencing more extreme weather events due to climate change.
A 2024 report by Yemen’s Red Crescent projected that the country will see less precipitation overall, but that flooding events are expected to be more severe in the monsoon season. Yemen’s rainy season begins in late March, and rains intensify in July through mid-August.
The World Health Organization said this week that Yemenis were suffering “disproportionately from climate change due to their already undermined capacities, limited resources and fragile infrastructure.”
It warned that more heavy rains were expected in the coming weeks and months. Though the country’s conflict and disorder makes determining the true toll of the floods difficult, the organization said that at least 36 people had been killed in the western province of Hodeida alone by flooding in recent weeks, and in the central province of Marib there are roughly 8,400 internally displaced families.

Topics: Yemen

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