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DAMASCUS: Israel has launched an air attack targeting a site in the vicinity of the Syrian city of Baniyas that caused some material losses, the Syrian state news agency said on Tuesday quoting a military source.
CAIRO: Egypt’s revenue from the Suez Canal plunged by almost two thirds last year, officials said Wednesday, attributing the sharp drop to regional tensions and wars in the Middle East that have impacted traffic through the key waterway.
The canal is a major source of foreign currency for the Egyptian government, with about 10 percent of world trade flowing through the waterway in recent years.
The Suez Canal Authority, which runs the waterway, said the canal generated an annual revenue of $3.991 billion in 2024, down from a historic high of $10.25 billion in 2023, according to a statement posted on its Facebook page.
Canal traffic has been significantly disrupted after Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels started to threaten maritime trade and targeting vessels heading to Israel through the Suez Canal to pressure Israel to stop the war in Gaza, which started on Oct. 7, 2023.
Between November 2023 and January 2024, the Houthis targeted over 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two ships and killing four sailors. The rebels insisted the attacks would continue as long as the wars go on and have devastated shipping through the region.
According to the Egyptian canal authority, only 13,213 ships passed through the canal in 2024, marking a 50 percent decline compared to the number of ships in 2023, when over 26,000 ships passed through.
Still, canal authority chief Osama Rabie said that the attacks challenge the region but have not prevented Egypt from continuing to provide its navigational and maritime services in the Suez.
The International Monetary Fund reported in March 2024 that the Suez Canal trade dropped by 50 percent in the first two months of that year, compared to the previous year, citing attacks on vessels in the Red Sea.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s government in 2015 completed a significant expansion of the Suez Canal, adding a second shipping lane and allowing it to handle some of the world’s largest vessels.
The canal, which connects the Mediterranean and the Red seas, was opened in 1869. It serves as a vital artery for global trade — a crucial link for oil, natural gas and cargo. The canal authority operates a system of convoys, consisting of one northbound and one southbound per day.
TEHRAN: Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Wednesday that Iran’s enrichment of uranium as part of its nuclear program was “non-negotiable” after US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff called for a halt.
“Iran’s enrichment is a real, accepted matter. We are ready to build confidence in response to possible concerns, but the issue of enrichment is non-negotiable,” Araghchi told reporters after a cabinet meeting.
The remarks came as Araghchi and Witkoff are due to meet again in Oman on Saturday, a week after they held the highest-level talks between the longtime foes since US President Donald Trump abandoned a landmark nuclear deal in 2018.
Trump reimposed sweeping sanctions in a policy of “maximum pressure” against Tehran that he has reinstated since returning to office in January.
In March, he sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urging talks but warning of possible military action if they fail to produce a deal.
Both sides described Saturday’s meeting as “constructive.”
But on Tuesday, Witkoff said Iran must “stop and eliminate” its enrichment of uranium as part of any nuclear deal.
He had previously demanded only that Iran return to the 3.67 percent enrichment ceiling set by the 2015 accord between Iran and major powers that Trump withdrew from.
Araghchi condemned what he called the “contradictory and conflicting positions” coming out of the Trump administration ahead of Saturday’s talks.
“We will find out the true opinions of the Americans during the negotiation session,” he said.
Iran’s top diplomat said he hoped to start negotiations on the framework of a possible agreement but said that required “constructive positions” from the US.
“If we continue to (hear) contradictory and conflicting positions, we are going to have problems,” he warned.
Araghchi is set to head to Iranian ally Russia on Thursday, Iran’s ambassador in Moscow Kazem Jalili said.
Iran has said the visit was “pre-planned” but will include discussions on the Iran-US talks.
“The objective of (my) trip to Russia is to convey a written message from the supreme leader” to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Araghchi said.
In readiness for the US talks, Iran has engaged with Russia and China, which were both parties to the 2015 deal.
Ahead of Saturday’s second round of talks in Muscat, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said he hoped a deal could be reached with the US, the official IRNA news agency reported.
On Tuesday, Khamenei cautioned that while the talks have proceeded well in their early stages, they could still prove fruitless.
“The negotiations may or may not yield results,” he said, noting that Iran had already outlined its “red lines.”
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have said the country’s military capabilities are off-limits in the talks.
Late on Sunday, IRNA said Iran’s regional influence and its missile capabilities — both sources of concern for Western governments — were also among its “red lines.”
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi was due in Iran later Wednesday for talks with senior officials.
The UN watchdog was tasked with overseeing Iran’s compliance with the 2015 nulear deal.
In its latest report, the IAEA said Iran had an estimated 274.8 kilograms of uranium enriched to up to 60 percent.
That level far exceeds the the 3.67 percent ceiling set by the 2015 deal but still falls short of the 90 percent threshold required for a nuclear warhead.
DAMASCUS: Save the Children said on Wednesday that more than 400,000 children in the Syrian Arab Republic were at risk of “severe malnutrition” after the US suspended aid, forcing the charity to slash operations in the country.
Bujar Hoxha, Save the Children’s Syria director, in a statement called on the international community to urgently fill the funding gap, warning that needs were “higher than ever” after years of war and economic collapse.
“More than 416,000 children in Syria are now at significant risk of severe malnutrition following the sudden suspension of foreign aid,” Save the Children said in a statement, adding separately that the cuts were those of the US.
The global aid situation has grown dire since US President Donald Trump ordered the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development early this year.
His administration scrapped 83 percent of humanitarian programs funded by USAID.
The agency had an annual budget of $42.8 billion, representing 42 percent of total global humanitarian aid.
The suspension has “forced the closure of one third of Save the Children’s life-saving nutrition activities” across Syria, the charity said, halting “vital care for over 40,500 children” aged under five.
Hoxha said the closure of the charity’s nutrition centers “comes at the worst possible time” with “the needs in Syria are higher than ever.”
Its clinics that are still open are “reporting a surge in malnutrition cases while struggling to keep up with the growing demand for care,” the charity added.
More than 13 years of conflict in Syria ravaged the country, with the health system shattered and infrastructure hobbled.
In February, a United Nations Development Programme report estimated that nine out of 10 Syrians now live in poverty and face food insecurity with “malnutrition on the rise, particularly among children.”
Save the Children said more than 650,000 children under five in Syria were now “chronically malnourished,” while more than 7.5 million children nationwide needed humanitarian assistance, which it said was the highest number since the crisis began.
Hoxha urged the international community to “urgently step up” to fill the funding gap.
Syrian children “are paying the price for decisions made thousands of miles away,” Hoxha added in the statement.
DUBAI: Sameer Abbas Mohamed, a Syrian refugee from Qamishli who fled to Iraq in 2013, was terrified when his one-year-old son, Yusuf, was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He knew the disease was life-threatening — and highly contagious.
“I have two older boys, and I was scared they would catch the disease,” said Mohamed, who lives in Qushtapa refugee camp for Syrians in Irbil, home to most of the 300,000 Syrian refugees in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
“Yusuf was also very young and I worried about losing him.”
Mohamed consulted several doctors when Yusuf began coughing. Scans revealed a mass on the right anterior wall of his chest. A diagnosis was finally made when a general surgeon reported the case to Iraq’s National TB Program.
Following surgery to remove the mass, Yusuf returned home, where nurses delivered an all-oral regimen, monitored his treatment, tracked his progress, offered support, and educated the family on isolation measures to prevent the disease’s spread.
Within six months, Yusuf was cured.
His journey reflects the progress made in combating TB in Iraq, especially the drug-resistant variant that has emerged in the conflict-affected country — which until recently had the region’s highest prevalence of TB cases.
Iraq’s NTP, supported by the International Organization for Migration, the Global Fund, and the World Health Organization, is tracking TB among displaced communities using advanced diagnostic technologies and artificial intelligence.
Giorgi Gigauri, IOM Iraq’s chief of mission, told Arab News that TB detection and timely treatment have helped to drive a significant decline in cases in Iraq.
This was achieved, he said, through a tech-driven strategy, including the installation of the advanced 10-color GeneXpert detection machine across Baghdad, Basrah, Najaf and Nineveh, enabling faster diagnoses.
IOM’s mobile medical teams were also equipped with 10 AI-supported chest X-ray devices, known as CAD4-TB, which can detect the disease in seconds — even in high-burden areas such as refugee camps and prisons.
Routine screenings by these mobile units helped to increase the detection rate of drug-resistant TB from 2 percent to 19 percent, and drug-sensitive TB from 4 percent to 14 percent between 2019 and 2024, according to IOM data.
• TB is caused by the Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacterium that primarily affects the lungs.
• It spreads through airborne droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes.
• Symptoms include a persistent cough, chest pain, fever, night sweats and weight loss.
• With proper treatment using antibiotics, TB is curable, though drug-resistant strains exist.
After screening, sputum samples are taken to central labs, making testing accessible for those unable to travel or living in areas with limited health care access.
Thanks to these efforts, TB cases in Iraq have fallen dramatically — from 45 to 23 cases per 100,000 people between 2013 and 2023. The current prevalence is 15 per 100,000, with an estimated mortality rate of three per 100,000.
In many ways, these numbers reflect Iraq’s wider public health recovery after decades of instability, including the crippling sanctions of the 1990s, the successive bouts of violence that followed the 2003 US-led invasion, and the 2014 rise of Daesh.
“Despite years of instability, progress made in the detection, treatment and prevention of the spread of TB restored trust in health care services by strengthening infrastructure and extending care to vulnerable groups like prisoners and displaced populations,” Gigauri told Arab News.
“It also supports upskilling of health professions and creates sustainable systems that can support responses to other communicable diseases.
“Efforts made by all partners under NTP have contributed to national recovery by addressing urgent health needs and laying a foundation for timely detection of preventable and treatable diseases.”
Despite a period of relative stability, Iraq still faces considerable humanitarian pressures amid a fragile economy and an unpredictable security landscape. According to UNHCR, more than 1 million Iraqis remain internally displaced, with 115,000 living in 21 camps across the Kurdistan Region.
Roughly five million displaced people have returned to their towns and villages since Daesh’s territorial defeat in 2017. But these areas often lack basic infrastructure, increasing the risk of TB outbreaks.
In Mosul — Iraq’s second-largest city, which endured three years under Daesh — those unable to afford housing live in overcrowded settlements, where malnutrition and exposure to the elements weaken immunity.
The mobile medical teams have been a game-changer for these vulnerable communities.
Digital X-rays equipped with CAD4-TB, powered by AI, now enable quick and accurate TB detection — a stark improvement from the three-month wait many patients once faced for CT scans.
This technology also reduces radiation exposure. A single CT scan can expose patients to the equivalent of 300 X-rays, according to Dr. Bashar Hashim Abbas, manager of the Chest and Respiratory Diseases clinic in Mosul.
Abbas said that mobile medical teams and digital X-ray devices have been vital for reaching remote communities and detainees who lack clinic access.
“The mobility of these machines helped us examine prisoners who were difficult to bring into the clinic due to complex security protocols. We discovered many cases, especially multidrug-resistant TB patients, in this way,” Abbas told Arab News.
“We conduct X-rays and take sputum samples for further lab investigations. Therefore, we take the diagnostic tools to them as much as we can, scaling up TB prevention and providing treatment.”
A centralized disease surveillance system, District Health Information Software 2, allows lab results to be registered and coordinated across labs, facilities, and the Iraqi Ministry of Health, improving routine TB reporting.
IOM’s TB services reached 6,398 people in 2024, with 120 drug-resistant TB cases treated. These efforts have been bolstered by $11 million in Global Fund support since 2022.
A key breakthrough has been shifting the treatment of multidrug-resistant TB from a burdensome series of injections to a simpler, all-oral regimen, which shortened recovery time from two years to six months and significantly improved outcomes.
“Previously, treatments involved daily injections for at least six to eight months, which were difficult to sustain for patients and treatment outcomes were relatively poor at 50 percent,” Grania Brigden, senior TB adviser at the Global Fund, told Arab News.
“However, the innovation in treatment through the all-oral regimen has reduced treatment to six months with a 75 percent to 80 percent success rate.”
Although no new TB vaccines are currently available, researchers are optimistic about developing more effective ones in the next five years. The existing BCG vaccine offers only partial protection and is less effective for adults and adolescents, who are more prone to transmission.
New vaccines are vital for achieving the WHO’s End TB Strategy goals — reducing TB mortality by 95 percent and incidence by 90 percent by 2035. Brigden said ongoing investment is key to meeting these targets.
Meanwhile, the Global Fund is focused on halting TB’s spread in Iraq. “We have invested significantly in commodity security to ensure that everyone who tests positive or is notified of TB is put on treatment,” said Brigden.
Thanks to these steps, many — like young Yusuf — are alive today who might otherwise have succumbed without proper care.
“The discussions of tuberculosis we had with the nurse who gave the medication had a positive impact on us,” said Yusuf’s father, Mohamed.
“The nurse gave us information on how to isolate him after the first two to three weeks. He reassured us that if we gave him the medication regularly and made sure there were no gaps, everything would be getting well.
“This made us less scared.”
ZABABDEH: In the mainly Christian Palestinian town of Zababdeh, the runup to Easter has been overshadowed by nearby Israeli military operations, which have proliferated in the occupied West Bank alongside the Gaza war.
This year unusually Easter falls on the same weekend for all of the town’s main Christian communities — Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican — and residents have attempted to busy themselves with holiday traditions like making date cakes or getting ready for the scout parade.
But their minds have been elsewhere.
Dozens of families from nearby Jenin have found refuge in Zababdeh from the continual Israeli military operations that have devastated the city and its adjacent refugee camp this year.
“The other day, the (Israeli) army entered Jenin, people were panicking, families were running to pick up their children,” said Zababdeh resident Janet Ghanam.
“There is a constant fear, you go to bed with it, you wake up with it,” the 57-year-old Anglican added, before rushing off to one of the last Lenten prayers before Easter.
Ghanam said her son had told her he would not be able to visit her for Easter this year, for fear of being stuck at the Israeli military roadblocks that have mushroomed across the territory.
Zababdeh looks idyllic, nestled in the hills of the northern West Bank, but the roar of Israeli air force jets sometimes drowns out the sound of its church bells.
“It led to a lot of people to think: ‘Okay, am I going to stay in my home for the next five years?’” said Saleem Kasabreh, an Anglican deacon in the town.
“Would my home be taken away? Would they bomb my home?“
Kasabreh said this “existential threat” was compounded by constant “depression” at the news from Gaza, where the death toll from the Israel’s response to Hamas’s October 2023 attack now tops 51,000, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Zababdeh has been spared the devastation wreaked on Gaza, but the mayor’s office says nearly 450 townspeople lost their jobs in Israel when Palestinian work permits were rescinded after the Hamas attack.
“Israel had never completely closed us in the West Bank before this war,” said 73-year-old farmer Ibrahim Daoud. “Nobody knows what will happen.”
Many say they are stalked by the spectre of exile, with departures abroad fueling fears that Christians may disappear from the Holy Land.
“People can’t stay without work and life isn’t easy,” said 60-year-old math teacher Tareq Ibrahim.
Mayor Ghassan Daibes echoed his point.
“For a Christian community to survive, there must be stability, security and decent living conditions. It’s a reality, not a call for emigration,” he said.
“But I’m speaking from lived experience: Christians used to make up 30 percent of the population in Palestine; today, they are less than one percent.
“And this number keeps decreasing. In my own family, I have three brothers abroad — one in Germany, the other two in the United States.”
Catholic priest Elias Tabban adopted a more stoical attitude, insisting his congregation’s spirituality had never been so vibrant.
“Whenever the Church is in hard times... (that’s when) you see the faith is growing,” Tabban said.
