Myanmar junta makes rare request for foreign aid to cope with deadly floods

Myanmar junta makes rare request for foreign aid to cope with deadly floods
Flood-affected residents gather on higher ground by a temple as others ride bamboo rafts in Taungoo, Myanmar's Bago region following heavy rains in the aftermath of Typhoon Yagi. Typhoon Yagi. (File/AFP)
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Updated 15 September 2024
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Myanmar junta makes rare request for foreign aid to cope with deadly floods

Myanmar junta makes rare request for foreign aid to cope with deadly floods
  • Floods and landslides have killed almost 300 people in Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand in the wake of Typhoon Yagi
  • In Myanmar, more than 235,000 people have been forced from their homes by floods

TAUNGOO, Myanmar: Myanmar’s junta chief made a rare request Saturday for foreign aid to cope with deadly floods that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people who have already endured three years of war.
Floods and landslides have killed almost 300 people in Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand in the wake of Typhoon Yagi, which dumped a colossal deluge of rain when it hit the region last weekend.
In Myanmar, more than 235,000 people have been forced from their homes by floods, the junta said Friday, piling further misery on the country where war has raged since the military seized power in 2021.
In Taungoo — around an hour south of the capital Naypyidaw — residents paddled makeshift rafts on floodwaters lapping around a Buddhist pagoda.
Rescuers drove a speedboat through the waters, lifting sagging electricity lines and broken tree branches with a long pole.
“I lost my rice, chickens, and ducks,” said farmer Naung Tun, who had brought his three cows to higher ground near Taungoo after floodwaters innundated his village.
“I don’t care about the other belongings. Nothing else is more important than the lives of people and animals,” he told AFP.
Intense rainfall
The rains in the wake of typhoon Yagi sent people across Southeast Asia fleeing by any means necessary, including by elephant in Myanmar and jetski in Thailand.
“Officials from the government need to contact foreign countries to receive rescue and relief aid to be provided to the victims,” junta chief Min Aung Hlaing said on Friday, according to the Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.
“It is necessary to manage rescue, relief and rehabilitation measures as quickly as possible,” he was quoted as saying.
Myanmar’s military has previously blocked or frustrated humanitarian assistance from abroad.
Last year it suspended travel authorizations for aid groups trying to reach around a million victims of powerful Cyclone Mocha that hit the west of the country.
At the time the United Nations slammed that decision as “unfathomable.”
AFP has contacted a spokesperson for the UN in Myanmar for comment.
After cyclone Nargis killed at least 138,000 people in Myanmar in 2008, the then-junta was accused of blocking emergency aid and initially refusing to grant access to humanitarian workers and supplies.
The junta gave a death toll on Friday of 33, while earlier in the day the country’s fire department said rescuers had recovered 36 bodies.
A military spokesman said it had lost contact with some areas of the country and was investigating reports that dozens had been buried in landslides in a gold-mining area in central Mandalay region.
Military trucks carried small rescue boats to flood-hit areas around the military-built capital Naypyidaw on Saturday, AFP reporters said.
“Yesterday we had only one meal,” Naung Tun said from near Taungoo.
“It is terrible to experience flooding because we cannot live our lives well when it happens.”
“It can be okay for people who have money. But for the people who have to work day to day for their meals, it is not okay at all.”
More than 2.7 million people were already displaced in Myanmar by conflict triggered by the junta’s 2021 coup.
Vietnam authorities said Saturday that 262 people were dead and 83 missing.
Images from Laos capital Vientiane, meanwhile, showed houses and buildings inundated by the Mekong river.


Food rations are halved in one of Africa’s largest refugee camps after US aid cuts

Updated 4 sec ago
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Food rations are halved in one of Africa’s largest refugee camps after US aid cuts

Food rations are halved in one of Africa’s largest refugee camps after US aid cuts
KAKUMA: Martin Komol sighs as he inspects his cracked, mud-walled house that is one rain away from fully collapsing. Nothing seems to last for him and 300,000 other refugees in this remote Kakuma camp in Kenya — now, not even food rations.
Funding for the UN World Food Program has dropped after the Trump administration paused support in March, part of the widespread dismantling of foreign aid by the United States, once the world’s biggest donor.
That means Komol, a widowed father of five from Uganda, has been living on handouts from neighbors since his latest monthly ration ran out two weeks ago. He said he survives on one meal a day, sometimes a meal every two days.
“When we can’t find anyone to help us, we become sick, but when we go to the hospital, they say it’s just hunger and tell us to go back home,” the 59-year-old said. His wife is buried here. He is reluctant to return to Uganda, one of the more than 20 home countries of Kakuma’s refugees.
Food rations have been halved. Previous ration cuts led to protests in March. Monthly cash transfers that refugees used to buy proteins and vegetables to supplement the rice, lentils and cooking oil distributed by WFP have ended this month.
Each refugee now receives 3 kilograms (6 pounds) of rice per month, far below the 9 kilograms recommended by the UN for optimal nutrition. WFP hopes to receive the next donation of rice by August. That’s along with 1 kilogram of lentils and 500 milliliters of cooking oil per person.
“Come August, we are likely to see a more difficult scenario. If WFP doesn’t receive any funding between now and then, it means only a fraction of the refugees will be able to get assistance. It means only the most extremely vulnerable will be targeted,” said Colin Buleti, WFP’s head in Kakuma. WFP is seeking help from other donors.
As dust swirls along paths between the camp’s makeshift houses, the youngest children run and play, largely unaware of their parents’ fears.
But they can’t escape hunger. Komol’s 10-year-old daughter immerses herself in schoolbooks when there’s nothing to eat.
“When she was younger she used to cry, but now she tries to ask for food from the neighbors, and when she can’t get any she just sleeps hungry,” Komol said. In recent weeks, they have drunk water to try to feel full.
The shrinking rations have led to rising cases of malnutrition among children under 5 and pregnant and breastfeeding mothers.
At Kakuma’s largest hospital, run by the International Rescue Committee, children with malnutrition are given fortified formula milk.
Nutrition officer Sammy Nyang’a said some children are brought in too late and die within the first few hours of admission. The 30-bed stabilization ward admitted 58 children in March, 146 in April and 106 in May. Fifteen children died in April, up from the monthly average of five. He worries they will see more this month.
“Now with the cash transfers gone, we expect more women and children to be unable to afford a balanced diet,” Nyang’a said.
The hospital had been providing nutrient-dense porridge for children and mothers, but the flour has run out after stocks, mostly from the US, were depleted in March. A fortified peanut paste given to children who have been discharged is also running out, with current supplies available until August.
In the ward of whimpering children, Susan Martine from South Sudan cares for her 2-year-old daughter, who has sores after swelling caused by severe malnutrition.
The mother of three said her family often sleeps hungry, but her older children still receive hot lunches from a WFP school feeding program. For some children in the camp, it’s their only meal. The program also faces pressure from the aid cuts.
“I don’t know how we will survive with the little food we have received this month,” Martine said.
The funding cuts are felt beyond Kakuma’s refugee community. Businessman Chol Jook recorded monthly sales of 700,000 Kenyan shillings ($5,400) from the WFP cash transfer program and now faces losses.
Those who are hungry could slip into debt as they buy on credit, he said.

Russia sentences activist who helped Ukrainians flee war to 22 years in prison

Russia sentences activist who helped Ukrainians flee war to 22 years in prison
Updated 6 min 4 sec ago
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Russia sentences activist who helped Ukrainians flee war to 22 years in prison

Russia sentences activist who helped Ukrainians flee war to 22 years in prison
  • Nadezhda Rossinskaya was arrested in 2024 on charges of treason and aiding terrorist activities

LONDON: Russian activist who helped collect humanitarian aid for Ukraine and evacuate Ukrainians from the war zone was sentenced on Friday to 22 years in prison by a Moscow military court, the RIA state news agency reported.
Nadezhda Rossinskaya, also known as Nadin Geisler, ran a group called “Army of Beauties,” which said it had assisted some 25,000 people in Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine in 2022-23, according to a report last year in The Moscow Times.
Authorities arrested Geisler in February 2024 and later charged her with treason and aiding terrorist activities over a post they said she made on Instagram calling for donations to Ukraine’s Azov Battalion.
Geisler denied any wrongdoing, and her lawyer said she was not the author of the post, according to a trial transcript compiled by Mediazona, an independent Russian outlet.
Prosecutors had requested 27 years for Geisler, who is in her late 20s. Mediazona reported that she had asked the court to imprison her for 27 years and one day, so that her prison term could surpass that of Darya Trepova, a Russian woman jailed for delivering a bomb that killed a pro-war blogger in 2023.
Trepova’s sentence, handed down last year, was the longest given to any woman in modern Russian history.
Prosecutions for terrorism, espionage and cooperation with a foreign state have risen sharply in Russia since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine over three years ago. Pervy Otdel, a Russian lawyers’ association, says 359 people were convicted of such crimes in 2024.


Pro-Palestinian activists say they damaged planes at UK military base

Pro-Palestinian activists say they damaged planes at UK military base
Updated 29 min 16 sec ago
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Pro-Palestinian activists say they damaged planes at UK military base

Pro-Palestinian activists say they damaged planes at UK military base
  • Campaign group Palestine Action said that its activists had entered the Brize Norton base in Oxfordshire and escaped undetected

LONDON: Pro-Palestinian activists in Britain said they had broken into a Royal Air Force base in central England on Friday and damaged two military aircraft.

The campaign group Palestine Action said that its activists had entered the Brize Norton base in Oxfordshire and escaped undetected.

“Flights depart daily from the base to RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus,” the group said on X accompanied by video footage. “From Cyprus, British planes collect intelligence, refuel fighter jets and transport weapons to commit genocide in Gaza.”

There was no immediate response from Britain’s Ministry of Defense.


Kremlin says Middle East is plunging into ‘abyss of instability and war’

Kremlin says Middle East is plunging into ‘abyss of instability and war’
Updated 39 min 59 sec ago
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Kremlin says Middle East is plunging into ‘abyss of instability and war’

Kremlin says Middle East is plunging into ‘abyss of instability and war’
  • Asked on Friday if Russia had any red lines when it came to the situation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that countries in the region should have their own red lines

ST PETERSBURG:The Kremlin said on Friday that the Middle East was plunging into “an abyss of instability and war” and that Moscow was worried by events and still stood ready to mediate if needed.
Russia, which has close ties with Iran, and also maintains close links to Israel, has urged the US not to strike Iran and has called for a diplomatic solution to the crisis around Tehran’s nuclear program to be found.
Asked on Friday if Russia had any red lines when it came to the situation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that countries in the region should have their own red lines.
“The region is plunging into an abyss of instability and war,” Peskov said.
Moscow sees that Israel wants to continue its military action against Iran for now, but Russia has lines of communication open with Israel and the US, Peskov added.


Russian strikes on Odesa kill one, wound at least 13

Russian strikes on Odesa kill one, wound at least 13
Updated 48 min 27 sec ago
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Russian strikes on Odesa kill one, wound at least 13

Russian strikes on Odesa kill one, wound at least 13

ODESA: One person was killed and more than a dozen others were wounded in Russia’s latest aerial attack on Ukraine, which targeted the southern port city of Odesa, officials said on Friday.
Emergency services published images of firefighters helping a woman in pyjamas climb from the window of a housing block in flames.
Both Moscow and Kyiv have stepped up their drone and missile attacks after three years of war and peace talks initiated by the United States appear closer to collapse.
Ukrainian police said one person was killed and 13 were wounded in Odesa, including three rescue workers who were hurt at the scene of the attack.
“Residential buildings, higher education institutions, civilian infrastructure and transport were damaged by the strike,” said Oleg Kiper, the governor of the Black Sea region.
The Ukrainian air force said Russia had launched 86 drones in the barrage and that 70 had been downed by air defense systems.
The Russian defense ministry, meanwhile, said its forces had eliminated at least 61 Ukrainian drones.
Odesa, one of Ukraine’s largest port cities and a UNESCO heritage site, has been under persistent Russian attacks since Moscow invaded its neighbor early in 2022.