Tag Archives: Aid

U.S. backed forces appeal for aid for hundreds fleeing IS

Fighters of the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) carry their weapons as they walk in the western rural area of Manbij, in Aleppo

By Rodi Said and Lisa Barrington

NEAR MANBIJ, Syria/BEIRUT (Reuters) – – U.S.-backed forces waging an offensive against the Islamic State-held city of Manbij in northern Syria appealed for international assistance for those fleeing the fighting on Tuesday as the forces tightened their encirclement of the city.

The SDF push comes at the same time as other enemies of Islamic State, including the governments of Syria and Iraq, also launched major offensives on other fronts, in what amounts to the most sustained pressure on the militants since they proclaimed their caliphate in 2014.

The Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance launched the advance two weeks ago to seize Islamic State’s last territory on the Syria-Turkey border and cut the self-declared caliphate off from the world.

“In the areas we control we have tried to take care of the needs of the internally displaced persons. But we are not able to cover their needs,” Sharfan Darwish of the SDF-allied Manbij Military Council told Reuters in Beirut by telephone.

“The international community must turn their attention to the people which have been liberated from Daesh (Islamic State),” he said, adding that there were no international humanitarian organizations working in the area.

Darwish said the Manbij civil council was bringing supplies from the northern, Syrian YPG militia-controlled city of Kobani to displaced persons, but this was not enough.

The SDF is a U.S.-backed group formed last year which includes the powerful Kurdish YPG militia and Arab fighters.

They are one of a number of sides fighting in Syria’s complex civil war now in its sixth year. The conflict pits rebels against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Syrian government forces and some rebel groups are also fighting separate battles against Islamic State. The SDF has largely avoided fighting against government forces and focuses on fighting Islamic State.

BRAVING SNIPER FIRE

Around 1,100 people have already fled Islamic State-held Manbij this week into SDF-held territory, braving Islamic State sniper fire on the city’s edges, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Many who had fled the city told Reuters that Islamic State fighters were trying to prevent people leaving. One person told Reuters Islamic State was arresting people suspected of collaborating with the SDF.

Having seized control of the last route into Manbij on Friday, the SDF has yet to enter the town.

“We are closing in on Manbij,” Darwish said, adding that fighting continues on the city’s outskirts.

The Observatory said the SDF has taken about 105 villages and farms around Manbij since the start of the operation.

Since the start of the offensive on May 31, 49 civilians have died as a result of the U.S.-led coalition air strikes in and around Manbij and 19 civilians had been killed by Islamic State, the Observatory said.

It also said at least 246 Islamic State fighters and 29 SDF fighters have been killed.

Syrian government and allied forces are trying to advance against the Islamic State south-west of their de facto capital in Syria, Raqqa. Fighting on Monday between Ithriya and al Tabqa killed 11 government and 17 Islamic State, the Observatory said.

Syrian state media broadcast pictures of bloodied bodies lying in the desert sand which it said showed 16 Islamic State fighters killed by government and allied forces in the fighting.

Syrian government and allied forces have been supported by Russian air power since September last year, an intervention which helped turn the tide of the war in Assad’s favor.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington in Beirut and Rodi Said near Manbij, Syria, editing by Peter Millership)

Damascus Refugees run deadly gauntlet to fetch aid, food

A general view shows a deserted street at the beginning of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp

y John Davison

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Palestinians living in Yarmouk refugee camp on the southern outskirts of Damascus depend on food aid to survive the Syrian civil war. But collecting it can be lethal.

With Islamic State and al Qaeda affiliate Nusra Front fighting each other for control of the camp, the United Nations has been unable to deliver food for more than a year and has to distribute it in neighboring areas instead.

On the journey to the collection point, tarpaulins hung between buildings offer the only protection in some areas keeping residents out of the sights of snipers, who often fail to distinguish between fighters and non-combatants.

Once the camp residents have run this gauntlet, they still have to get through an Islamic State checkpoint. This controls the way out to the nearby town of Yalda, where the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA and other groups hand out aid when they can.

One 22-year-old resident who called himself Mahmoud – although he said this was an alias due to the risk of reprisals by the militants – described via internet messages how he makes the trip three times a week.

“I leave my house, and about a kilometer away there’s the checkpoint,” he told Reuters. “Most streets in the camp are in the sights of snipers, from both sides – I have to watch out for them. Some streets I run down, some I can just walk.”

While tens of thousands have fled the camp since the war began, hundreds of residents still brave the same journey.

The camp has existed for decades, one of many set up in the region after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war for Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes. Today they largely accommodate descendents of the original refugees, although some Syrians displaced by the war have inhabited Yarmouk.

Yarmouk has been bombarded, besieged and isolated from the outside world since early in the multi-sided conflict, which is now in its sixth year. Government forces, rebels and jihadists have all fought for control of the camp that lies just a few kilometers (miles) from the heart of Damascus.

NO MAN’S LAND

Islamic State entered the densely built up Yarmouk in April last year, helped by Nusra Front fighters in a rare instance of cooperation between the jihadist rivals, capturing most of it.

Since then they have turned their guns on each other, and fighting in recent weeks has destroyed countless more homes as Islamic State tries to take areas held by Nusra Front.

“Things got worse recently. This is a fight taking place only inside the camp, not spreading out to another area – it’s concentrated,” said Mahmoud. Fighters were targeting houses and burning them, even with occupants still inside, to hamper advances by the other side, he added.

Across a strip of no man’s land from Islamic State territory, rebels fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army control Yalda.

“The route to Yalda is more or less dangerous depending on how heavy the clashes are. Lately, people living in the fighting hotspots have to move around behind tarpaulin curtains and banks of earth,” said Yousef, who like all the Yarmouk residents interviewed by Reuters also asked to use an alias.

“Last Thursday, someone got shot by a sniper,” said Yousef.

Mohammed, 30, who before the latest violence sold food from a street stall, said: “If someone leaves their house to get a bit of water, they might not come back. Getting bread, getting food, could cost someone their life.”

FRAGILE AID SUPPLY

Islamic State controls at least two-thirds of Yarmouk and has been trying to prise the rest from Nusra Front since April, monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that several civilians have been killed in recent weeks.

Many do not venture out. “Most people just sit at home … we’re stuck here and stuck in the camp,” said Abu Anas, a former manual laborer.

“There’s very little water, and little fuel. We chiefly rely on aid from UNRWA. It’s not much but it’s our best hope – every 20 days we get a parcel which is just about enough for a family.” These include around 4 kg (9 pounds) of lentils, 5 kg of sugar, 1 kg of pasta and tins of tomatoes, he said.

Fighting can close the checkpoint for days at a time. But if they can get through, Mahmoud, Yousef and their fellow residents also buy any extra provisions they can afford at market stalls in Yalda, before returning.

Even getting aid the few kilometers from Damascus to Yalda, through government and then rebel-held territory, requires painstaking talks with local authorities, community leaders and commanders of the warring sides.

“When we first had access to Yalda, just to get there the U.N. had to negotiate 17 separate agreements,” UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said. For at least a month beginning in April, UNRWA could not even reach Yalda, and warned that residents faced starvation until supplies resumed.

“Inside Yarmouk, the fighting forces have been using indiscriminately large munitions,” Gunness said. “For a U.N.-assisted population in the 21st century to find itself in this situation in the capital city of a U.N. member state is completely unacceptable.”

EXODUS

Frequent power and water supply cuts mean people have to rely on generators and drinking water sold from the back of trucks which residents bring in by a different route. Water from wells – many of them hard to reach because of the fighting – is polluted and can be used only for washing, Yousef said.

Among the thousands who have joined the exodus from Yarmouk, some have sought refuge inside Syria with others heading to neighboring countries or Europe.

An aid worker for the Jafra Foundation, which monitors human rights in Palestinian camps in Syria, said several hundred people had left Yarmouk in recent weeks alone.

The camp’s pre-war Palestinian population of 160,000 has plunged to between 3,000 and 6,000 residents. At least the same number of displaced from the camp also live in Yalda, he said.

Mahmoud, who said his mother was killed in shelling by government forces three years ago, will stay.

“My home is here and my dad lives here. When I go to Yalda, I feel like a displaced person,” he said. “Yarmouk is my camp, I can’t leave it.”

(editing by David Stamp)

Global Partnership for Preparedness launched at World Summit

People walk through a flooded road after they moved out from their houses in Biyagama

By Megan Rowling

ISTANBUL (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A new scheme launched by U.N. agencies, the World Bank and countries most vulnerable to climate change on Tuesday is seeking funding of up to $130 million to help 20 at-risk nations prepare better for natural disasters.

The Global Partnership for Preparedness, launched at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul on Tuesday, aims to help the countries attain a basic level of readiness by 2020 for future disaster risks mainly caused by climate change.

The money will enable the countries to access risk analysis and early warning systems, put together contingency plans, including pre-committed finance, and respond better to shocks such as floods and droughts.

“The aim is to save lives, safeguard development gains, and reduce the economic impacts of crises,” said United Nations Development Program Administrator Helen Clark. Development gains, in particular, “can otherwise be lost with each disaster”, she said.

The countries will be selected from the 43 nations belonging to the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a group that spans Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Pacific. Backers hope to expand the program to 50 countries within five years.

Funding for the first phase has yet to be put in place but is likely to come from international institutions, U.N. agencies and government donors. Supporters hope the scheme will get off the ground by October.

One government likely to benefit from the partnership is the Philippines, which is looking to improve its ability to identify at-risk areas, and to bolster systems to respond to disasters, working alongside business and communities, said Roberto B. Tan, the country’s treasurer.

“If we plan ahead, we will create a situation where instead of wave after wave of climate-driven natural disasters destroying what gains communities have made, they can pick up their lives again as soon as possible,” he said.

The World Bank, which plans to bring to the table its expertise, including in social protection and assessing hazards, emphasized the current low level of international funding for disaster preparedness.

Less than 0.5 percent of development assistance today goes to averting disasters and preparing for them, according to estimates.

But Laura Tuck, the World Bank’s vice president for sustainable development, said there was growing evidence that donor governments and the aid community have grasped the need to increase that investment, not least due to mass migration around the world in the past year.

“One of the most exciting things from this summit is the emphasis moving from responding to humanitarian disasters to addressing situations upfront,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Building resilience helps to address disasters, population movements, conflict, fragile countries – all that can be mitigated through investments in resilience.”

DISASTER INSURANCE

Separately, the World Food Programme (WFP) said it would extend disaster insurance coverage for African countries to help transform how they cope with drought and floods by improving their ability to manage risks before they hit.

It will use a commitment of $1.6 million from the Danish government to double the number of people insured in countries that have already taken out cover under the African Risk Capacity scheme.

By 2030, WFP aims to buy insurance cover capable of providing half its natural disaster aid expenditures in Asia and Africa each year, with payouts varying from year to year according to the disasters experienced.

Elhadj As Sy, secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said a new commitment made in Istanbul by donor governments to tie less of the humanitarian aid they give to particular crises could give agencies more freedom to invest in reducing disaster risk.

“It makes a lot of sense to do something today to have the outcome you want tomorrow rather than waiting for the shock to arrive,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

He recently visited southern Africa, which has been hit by its worst drought in the last 30 years, but the aid response is not yet at the level required, he said.

“It will be a shame again if we wait until we see the pictures of dying babies before we start rushing in and responding,” he said.

(Reporting by Megan Rowling; editing by Laurie Goering. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Nepal says need more aid for quake rebuilding

A man works to rebuild a house a year after the 2015 earthquakes in Bhaktapur

By Gopal Sharma

KATHMANDU (Reuters) – Aid-dependent Nepal needs $7.86 billion over five years, $1.17 billion more than earlier estimates, to rebuild homes and infrastructure destroyed by the deadly earthquake in 2015, the government said on Thursday.

In total, 9,000 people were killed across Nepal in the 7.8 magnitude quake, which the government said had affected 2.8 million of the Himalayan nation’s 28 million population.

International donors, who pledged $4.1 billion for reconstruction last year, have been left frustrated as little of that fund has been spent because of haggling between political parties, leading to a delay in helping millions of survivors.

Authorities said the increase in the amount of aid required was due to a larger scale of destruction than initially projected.

The Red Cross says four million people are still living in poor-quality temporary shelters, posing a threat to their health.

“The increased requirement of funds is due to a rise in the number of people affected,” Prime Minister K.P. Oli told lawmakers in Kathmandu.

“The government will construct community houses and move survivors who are living in the open to roofed shelters,” Oli said.

Reconstruction of private homes will be completed in two years, he added, urging donors to provide additional support for rebuilding.

(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Toby Davis)

Lebanese military gets U.S., British aid for defending border with Syria

US Helicopters in Lebanon

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon’s armed forces acquired three U.S. helicopters worth $26 million on Thursday to help in efforts to stop Syria’s civil war spilling over its border, along with almost $29 million of British aid as EU countries also step up their support.

The Lebanese armed forces have now received a total of nine Huey II multi-mission helicopters from the United States as part of $1.3 billion in security assistance given since 2004, U.S. interim Ambassador Richard H. Jones said.

“We have no plans to slow down or alter that level of support,” Jones said at Beirut’s military air base.

Fighting between Islamic State and al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front militants often overlaps Lebanon’s mountainous northern border with Syria, where a civil war is now in its fifth year.

Fighters briefly overran the northern Lebanese town of Arsal in 2014 before withdrawing to the hills after clashes with the army. Fighting in the border area killed at least 32 Nusra and Islamic State fighters this week.

The helicopters will improve the army’s ability to quickly reinforce “remote areas of tension along the border in support of the army’s fight against terrorists”, Jones said.

Lebanon has a weak government and a number of nations support its armed forces, concerned that regional conflict and a power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia could again destabilise a country which emerged from its own civil war 26 years ago.

On a visit to Lebanon on Thursday, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond announced a further $22 million for border guard training through to 2019 and $6.5 million for general training of 5,000 Lebanese troops. “Lebanon is an important part of the front line against terrorism,” Hammond said.

“We are delighted by the way the UK support is being translated into strengthened border security and is enabling the armed forces to take the fight to Daesh and keep Lebanon safe from the incursions of Daesh,” he said, referring to Islamic State.

EU foreign policy head Federica Mogherini, who visited Lebanon last week, said that Lebanon’s security was important for Europe’s safety too and the EU was willing to expand its support for the Lebanese armed forces.

In February Saudi Arabia suspended a $3 billion aid package for the Lebanese army in what an official called a response to Beirut’s failure to condemn attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran.

Lebanon’s Iranian-backed group Hezbollah is also a significant military presence in the country, with extensive combat experience. It fought Israel in an inconclusive 2006 war and is supporting President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Issam Abdallah; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

U.S. says working with Russia on aid flow, truce in Syria

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United States is working with Russia to improve access to besieged areas in Syria and to stop the Syrian government from removing medical supplies from aid convoys, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday.

Antony Blinken, deputy U.S. Secretary of State, said that major and regional powers were monitoring a fragile cessation of hostilities that went into force on Saturday to “prevent any escalation” but it was a “challenging process”.

“At the end of the day the best possible thing that could happen is for the cessation of hostilities to really take root, and to be sustained, for the humanitarian assistance to flow and then for the negotiations to start that lead to a political transition,” Blinken told a news conference.

The World Health Organisation said Syrian officials had “rejected” medical supplies from being part of the latest convoy to the besieged town of Moadamiya on Monday. WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said they included emergency kits, trauma and burn kits and antibiotics.

“We are indeed very concerned about reports that medical supplies were removed from some of the aid convoys. This is an issue that was brought before the task force,” Blinken said, referring to the International Syria Support Group (ISSG).

“We are now working, including with Russia, to ensure that going forward medical supplies remain in the aid convoys as they deliver assistance.”

Russian officials were not immediately available to comment.

“The removal of those supplies is yet another unconscionable act by the regime, but this is now before the task force and we will look in the days ahead as assistance continues to flow to make sure that those medical supplies are in fact included,” Blinken said.

The humanitarian task force, chaired by Jan Egeland, meets again in Geneva on Thursday.

Another ISSG task force on the cessation of hostilities is handling reports of violations of the truce, which does not include Islamic State or the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

“We’re then able to immediately try to address them and to prevent them from reoccurring and thus to prevent any escalation that leads to the breakdown of the cessation of hostilities,” Blinken said, after talks with U.N. Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura.

“That’s the most effective way to try to keep it going and then to deepen it. But it is a very challenging process, it’s fragile and we have our eyes wide open about those challenges.”

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Egypt Criticizes U.S. Suspension of Aid

Egypt is criticizing a decision by the U.S. to suspend a large part of the $1.3 billion in aid.

A government spokesman said they would “not surrender to American pressure.”

The U.S. suspended delivery of large-scale military systems and will not be providing cash support. Secretary of State John Kerry said the decision was not “a withdrawal from our relationship.”

“The interim government understands very well our commitment to the success of this government,” Mr Kerry told the BBC. The state department added the freeze was not a permanent decision. However, the freeze is dependent on the nation’s move toward “free and fair elections.”