Sudan’s government denies famine exists in Zamzam camp in Darfur

Sudan’s government denies famine exists in Zamzam camp in Darfur
The conflict created the world’s largest displacement crisis with more than 10 million people forced to flee their homes. (Reuters)
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Updated 05 August 2024
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Sudan’s government denies famine exists in Zamzam camp in Darfur

Sudan’s government denies famine exists in Zamzam camp in Darfur

KHARTOUM: Sudan has denied the existence of famine in North Darfur’s Zamzam camp for internally displaced people.

In a statement, Sudan’s Federal Humanitarian Aid Commission said talk about famine in the camp was inaccurate and conditions were “not consistent” with those that must be met to declare famine.

On Sunday, an aid group said that malnourished children at the camp were at risk of dying, because it was forced to ration treatment due to a blockade imposed by a notorious paramilitary group

Doctors Without Borders said the Rapid Support Forces, which have besieged El-Fasher city as part of its war against the Sudanese military, have blocked three trucks carrying lifesaving medical supplies, including therapeutic food, for the city and the nearby Zamzam camp where famine was confirmed last week.

Sudan plunged into chaos in April last year when simmering tensions between the military and the RSF developed into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, before spreading across the northeastern African country. Darfur saw some of the worst and most devastating bouts of fighting in the war.

The conflict has killed thousands of people and pushed many into starvation. It created the world’s largest displacement crisis with more than 10 million people forced to flee their homes since April 2023, according to the UN migration agency. Over 2 million of those fled to neighboring countries.

International experts on the Famine Review Committee confirmed Thursday that starvation at Zamzam camp, where up to 600,000 people shelter, has grown into full famine.

International experts use set criteria to confirm the existence of famines. A famine is declared in an area when one in five people or households severely lack food and face starvation and destitution that would ultimately lead to critical levels of acute malnutrition and death.

In Zamzam camp, which has swelled with the arrival of new displaced people, many children are in critical condition, Doctors Without Borders said, adding that the malnutrition ward at its field hospital in the camp is overcrowded with a 126 percent bed occupancy rate.

The group said RSF fighters have blocked the trucks in the town of Kabkabiya for over a month, adding that it was forced to limit the number of children receiving therapeutic food in the overcrowded camp as its stock of medicine covers only two weeks.

“Deliberately obstructing or delaying humanitarian cargo is putting the lives of thousands of children at-risk as they are cut-off from receiving life-saving treatment,” it said on social media platform X.

There was no immediate comment from the RSF.

The RSF has imposed a siege on El-Fasher in its monthslong attempt to take it from the military and its allied rebel groups. The city, the provincial capital of North Darfur, is the last stronghold for the military in the war-torn Darfur region.


Biden won’t support a strike on Iran nuclear sites as Israel weighs response to Iran missile attack

Biden won’t support a strike on Iran nuclear sites as Israel weighs response to Iran missile attack
Updated 24 sec ago
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Biden won’t support a strike on Iran nuclear sites as Israel weighs response to Iran missile attack

Biden won’t support a strike on Iran nuclear sites as Israel weighs response to Iran missile attack
  • “The answer is no,” Biden told reporters when asked if he would support such retaliation
  • US and allies are urging Israel to show restraint as it weighs retaliation against Iran airstrikes 

WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden said Wednesday he will not support an Israeli strike on sites related to Tehran’s nuclear program in response to Iran’s missile attack on Israel.
“The answer is no,” Biden told reporters when asked if he would support such retaliation after Iran fired about 180 missiles at Israel on Tuesday.
Biden’s comments came after he and fellow Group of Seven leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom spoke by telephone about coordinating new sanctions against Iran.
The US and allies are scrambling to keep the Mideast conflict — sparked by Iran-backed Hamas militants’ in Gaza’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel— from spreading further. They are urging Israel to show restraint as it weighs retaliation against Iran for Tuesday’s attack.
Israel is now carrying out what it has described as limited ground operations across its northern border with Lebanon to dig out Hezbollah, another Iran-backed group, after carrying out a series of massive air strikes that killed the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and decimated its leadership.
Last month, thousands of explosives hidden in pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah detonated, killing dozens of people and maiming thousands, including many civilians. Israel is widely believed to be behind the attack
Biden stated his opposition to Israel hitting Iranian nuclear facilities as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu weighed a range of options in how to respond to Tuesday’s attack. It was the second such attack by Iran on Israel in less than six months.
Israel’s choices range from a largely symbolic strike— similar to how Israel responded after Iran launched a barrage of missiles and attack drones in April— to hitting oil facilities and other infrastructure.
Targeting Iran’s controversial nuclear program is seen as perhaps the most provocative action that Israel could take. It’s one that the Democratic president believes could further enflame a Mideast conflict that he already worries could develop into a broader regional conflict.
The White House said in a statement that G7 leaders “unequivocally condemned Iran’s attack against Israel” and that Biden reaffirmed America’s “full solidarity and support to Israel and its people.”
Biden added that he supports Israel’s right to defend itself and “there are things that have to be done” in response to the Iranian barrage. He said he expected sanctions from the G7 nations to be announced soon.
“We will be discussing with the Israelis what they are going to do,” Biden told reporters before heading to the Carolinas to see the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene. “All seven of us agree that they have a right to respond.”
The office of Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni said in a statement that the leaders expressed “strong concern for the escalation of these last hours” and emphasized that “a conflict on a regional scale is in no one’s interest.” Italy holds the rotating presidency of the G7 group of industrialized democracies.
Biden said that he planned to speak with Netanyahu “relatively soon.”
Biden’s administration has signaled that it is urging Israel to display restraint in how it responds to Iran’s missile attack, which Biden said was “ineffective and defeated.”
The US military helped Israel defend against the attack that Iran carried out in retaliation for the killing of Tehran-backed leaders of Lebanese Hezbollah.
Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said there “must be a return message” to Iran. He said the US and Israel officials continue to discuss their response.
“At the same time, I think we recognize as important as the response of some kind should be, there is a recognition that the region is really balancing on a knife’s edge,” Campbell said at forum hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke on Wednesday with his counterparts Britain, France, Germany, and Italy to discuss the situation in the Middle East.


Tunisia readies for vote as incumbent Saied eyes victory

Tunisia readies for vote as incumbent Saied eyes victory
Updated 03 October 2024
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Tunisia readies for vote as incumbent Saied eyes victory

Tunisia readies for vote as incumbent Saied eyes victory
  • Saied’s expected win has created a mood of resignation in opposition ranks and made for a deeply lacklustre campaign
  • A little known law lecturer until he was thrust to power in 2019, Saied in 2021 staged a sweeping power grab, jailing many of his critics

TUNIS: Tunisians head to the polls Sunday for a presidential election in which analysts say incumbent Kais Saied is poised for victory with his most prominent critics behind bars.
The near-certainty of Saied’s win has created a mood of resignation in opposition ranks and made for a deeply lacklustre campaign.
There have been no campaign rallies or public debates and nearly all the campaign posters in city streets have been the incumbent’s.
It is a major step back for a country that long prided itself as the birthplace of the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 and a contrast even with the 2019 election that thrust Saied, then a little known law lecturer, to power.
The political outsider won by a landslide, with 73 percent of the vote in a second round runoff that saw turnout of 58 percent.
He had campaigned on a platform of strong government after nearly a decade of deadlock between Islamist and secular blocs since the 2011 revolution.
In 2021, he staged a sweeping power grab, dismissing the Islamist-led parliament. The following year he rewrote the constitution.
A quickening crackdown on political dissent which has seen jail sentences for critics across the political spectrum has drawn mounting criticism at home and abroad.
Jailed opposition figures include Rached Ghannouchi, head of the Islamist-inspired opposition party Ennahdha, which dominated political life after the revolution.
Also detained is Abir Moussi, head of the Free Destourian Party, which critics accuse of wanting to bring back the ousted regime.

Saied’s critics say that higher thresholds for candidate registration have also been exploited by the incumbent’s campaign.
Fourteen hopefuls were barred from joining the race, after election organizers ruled they had failed to provide enough signatures of endorsement, among other technicalities.
Some have been jailed after being convicted of forging signatures.
Human Rights Watch and other rights groups have charged that the organizers’ decision to reject the candidates was political.
Hatem Nafti, a political commentator and author of a forthcoming book on Saied’s authoritarian rule, said rights and freedoms have been curtailed since Saied’s “coup d’etat” in 2021.
“But things have reached a new level during this election, with attempts to prevent any succession (to Saied),” he told AFP.
The result has been that Saied faces just two challengers, one of them, former lawmaker Zouhair Maghzaoui, a supporter of the president’s 2021 power grab who “remains associated” with him, Nafti said.
North Africa analyst Pierre Vermeren said the election’s outcome had been decided in advance, citing “imbalances of all sorts between candidates.”
“Everything was done to ensure that a second round did not take place,” he told AFP.
Referring to Maghzaoui, Vermeren said “allowing a second-rate personality with a similar political persuasion as Saied’s” to join the race presented the incumbent with no real risk to his rule.
He said Maghzaoui’s candidacy was “a way of neutralising potential opposition.”

The second challenger, Ayachi Zammel, is also a former lawmaker and leads a small liberal party.
His candidacy was approved by election organizers shortly before he was charged with and later convicted of forging voter endorsements.
He currently faces more than 12 years in prison.
The jail sentence doesn’t affect his candidacy. The same was the case with 2019 presidential hopeful Nabil Karoui, who made it into the runoff against Saied from behind bars.
But unlike Zammel, Karoui was well known as the owner of widely watched television channel Nessma.
Nafti said Zammel had the potential to rally support from across the political spectrum, but he doubted it was “enough,” particularly after the prison sentence.
“He could have represented a focal point for the opposition, but his status as a convicted prisoner can only lead voters to disengagement and abstention,” he said.
With little at stake for Saied, his main challenge is to ensure a respectable turnout.
In the 2022 referendum on Saied’s revision of the constitution, only 30 percent of voters turned out.
In 2024 elections to a new legislature with limited powers, that figure fell to 11 percent — a record low since the revolution.
 


Tunisia arrests 12 over deadly migrant shipwreck

Tunisia arrests 12 over deadly migrant shipwreck
Updated 03 October 2024
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Tunisia arrests 12 over deadly migrant shipwreck

Tunisia arrests 12 over deadly migrant shipwreck
  • Main smuggler and his wife were among those arrested, two days after boat with 60 migrants capsized off Djerba island
  • Tunisia and neighbor Libya have become key launchpads for migrants risking the perilous Mediterranean Sea crossing to Europe

TUNIS: Tunisian authorities have arrested 12 people including a smuggler involved in organizing a recent crossing that killed 15 migrants after their boat capsized, the coast guard said in a statement Wednesday.
On Monday, a boat said to be bearing some 60 migrants capsized off the coast of the southeastern island of Djerba.
The coast guard had given an initial death toll of 12 passengers, all Tunisians and including children and a woman, before later revising it upwards to 15.
Authorities said they rescued 31 people and were still looking for the others.
In its statement Wednesday, the coast guard said the main smuggler and his wife were among those arrested, adding that authorities seized three cars, a boat and “large sums of money.”
President Kais Saied, who is seeking a new term in elections Sunday, has ordered the interior ministry to investigate the event, which he called “painful and strange.”
The island of Djerba — heavily policed and crowded with tourists — has rarely been used as a departure point for migrants seeking to reach Europe.
Other areas of Tunisia, as well as neighboring Libya, have become key launchpads for migrants risking the perilous Mediterranean Sea crossing to Europe.
Also on Monday, the coast guard said it rescued 22 Tunisians, most of them women and children, off the coast of Kerkennah in the east.
The day after, 36 other would-be migrants — Tunisians and Egyptians — were rescued off Bizerte in the north, local media said.
Each year, tens of thousands of people attempt to make the crossing from Tunisia, with Italy — whose Lampedusa island is only 150 kilometers (90 miles) away — often their first port of call.
The International Organization for Migration has said more than 30,309 migrants have died in the Mediterranean in the past decade, including more than 3,000 last year.
Since January 1, Tunisian rights group FTDES recorded at least 400 migrant deaths and disappearances in shipwrecks off Tunisia.
More than 1,300 people died or disappeared off the North African country last year, according to the group.
ayj-fka-bou/jsa


WHO chief says Lebanon health system ‘struggling to cope’

WHO chief says Lebanon health system ‘struggling to cope’
Updated 03 October 2024
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WHO chief says Lebanon health system ‘struggling to cope’

WHO chief says Lebanon health system ‘struggling to cope’
  • “The death toll in Lebanon is rising, and hospitals are overwhelmed with the influx of injured patients,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned on X

GENEVA: The World Health Organization chief warned Tuesday that Lebanon’s health system was struggling to keep up, after Israel escalated airstrikes and launched ground raids into the country.
“The death toll in Lebanon is rising, and hospitals are overwhelmed with the influx of injured patients,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned on X.
“The health system has been weakened by successive crises and is struggling to cope with the immense needs,” he said, adding that WHO was scaling up its response.
Israel shifted its focus last month from the war in Gaza, which was sparked by the October 7 attacks by Iran-backed Hamas, to securing its northern border with Lebanon.
More than 1,000 people have died since last week, in fighting that has included Israeli strikes on Beirut and its southern suburbs.
Tedros said that he had met with Arab League ambassadors in Geneva to discuss the situation.
“We agreed that patients, health workers and civilians, including refugees, must be protected and offered the health care they need,” he said.
He stressed that WHO had been working closely with the Lebanese health ministry “to ensure hospitals have enough medical supplies and health workers are trained for mass casualty events, as well as to maintain essential health services for the most vulnerable.”
“But more help is needed.” he said.
Tedros insisted though that “what the people of Lebanon, Gaza, Israel and throughout the Middle East need is peace.”
“The violence must end to prevent more loss and suffering. Any further escalation of the conflict will have catastrophic consequences for the region,” he warned.
“The best medicine is peace.”


Lebanon’s Health Ministry raises death toll to 6 from airstrike near central Beirut

Lebanon’s Health Ministry raises death toll to 6 from airstrike near central Beirut
Updated 24 min 49 sec ago
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Lebanon’s Health Ministry raises death toll to 6 from airstrike near central Beirut

Lebanon’s Health Ministry raises death toll to 6 from airstrike near central Beirut
  • Israeli forces suffer deadliest day on Lebanese front in a year
  • Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli air raids killed at least 46 people over the past 24 hours

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM: At least six people were killed in an Israeli air raid on a Hezbollah rescue facility in the heart of Beirut late Wednesday, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

The Israeli strike in the early hours of Thursday came after its forces suffered their deadliest day on the Lebanese front in a year of clashes against Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah.
Israel said it conducted a precise air strike on Beirut. Witnesses reported hearing a massive blast, and a security source said it targeted a building in central Beirut’s Bachoura neighborhood close to parliament, the nearest Israeli strikes have come to Lebanon’s seat of government.

Seven people were also wounded, Lebanese health officials said. A photo being circulated on Lebanese WhatsApp groups showed a heavily damaged building with its first floor on fire.
Three missiles also hit the southern suburb of Dahiyeh, where Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed last week, and loud explosions were heard, Lebanese security officials said. The southern suburbs came under more than a dozen Israeli strikes on Wednesday.
A day after Iran fired more than 180 missiles into Israel, Israel said on Wednesday eight soldiers were killed in ground combat in south Lebanon as its forces thrust into its northern neighbor.

The Israeli military said regular infantry and armored units joined its ground operations in Lebanon on Wednesday as Iran’s missile attack and Israel’s promise of retaliation raised concerns that the oil-producing Middle East could be caught up in a wider conflict.
Hezbollah said its fighters engaged Israeli forces inside Lebanon. The movement reported ground clashes for the first time since Israeli forces pushed over the border on Monday. Hezbollah said it had destroyed three Israeli Merkava tanks with rockets near the border town of Maroun El Ras.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a condolence video, said: “We are at the height of a difficult war against Iran’s Axis of Evil, which wants to destroy us.
“This will not happen because we will stand together and with God’s help, we will win together,” he said.
Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli air raids killed at least 46 people in the south and center of the country over the past 24 hours.
Iran said on Wednesday its missile volley — its biggest ever assault on Israel — was over barring further provocation, but Israel and the United States promised to hit back hard.
US President Joe Biden said he would not support any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites
in response to its ballistic missile attack and urged Israel to act “proportionally” against its regional arch-foe.
Biden joined a call with Group of Seven major power leaders on Wednesday to coordinate a response, including new sanctions against Tehran, the White House said.

G7 leaders voiced “strong concern” over the Middle East crisis but said a diplomatic solution was still viable and a region-wide conflict was in no one’s interest, a statement said.
Hezbollah said it repelled Israeli forces near several border towns and also fired rockets at military posts inside Israel.
The paramilitary group’s media chief Mohammad Afif said those battles were only “the first round” and that Hezbollah had enough fighters, weapons and ammunition to push back Israel.
Israel’s addition of infantry and armored troops from the 36th Division, including the Golani Brigade, the 188th Armored Brigade and 6th Infantry Brigade, suggested that the operation might expand beyond limited commando raids.
The military has said its incursion is largely aimed at destroying tunnels and other infrastructure on the border and there were no plans for a wider operation targeting the Lebanese capital Beirut to the north or major cities in the south.

1.2 million Lebanese displaced
Nevertheless, it issued new evacuation orders for around two dozen towns along the southern border, instructing inhabitants to head north of the Awali River, which flows east to west some 60 km (37 miles) north of the Israeli frontier.
More than 1,900 people have been killed and over 9,000 wounded in Lebanon in almost a year of cross-border fighting, with most of the deaths occurring in the past two weeks, according to Lebanese government statistics.
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said that about 1.2 million Lebanese had been displaced by Israeli attacks.
Malika Joumaa, from Sudan, was forced to take shelter in Saint Joseph’s church in Beirut after being forced from her house near Sidon in coastal south Lebanon with her husband and two children.
“It’s good that the church offered its help. We were going to stay in the streets; where would we have gone?“
Iran described Tuesday’s missile assault as a response to Israeli killings of militant leaders, including Nasrallah, attacks in Lebanon against the group and Israel’s war against Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza.
There were no casualties from the missile onslaught in Israel, but one person was killed in the occupied West Bank.