Tag Archives: Middle East

Year on from bombings, Brussels remains on alert

People take part in a rally called "The march against the fear, Tous Ensemble, Samen Een, All Together" in memory for the victims of bomb attacks in Brussels metro and Brussels international airport of Zaventem, in Brussels, Belgium, April 17, 2016. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo

By Robert-Jan Bartunek and Alastair Macdonald

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A year after Islamic State suicide bombers killed 32 people in Brussels, Belgian authorities say much remains unclear about who ordered the attacks, even if those who staged them are either dead or in jail.

The March 22 bloodshed in Brussels hit Zaventem airport and a metro train, coming four months after bombings and shootings in Paris that killed 130 people. Both sets of attacks were carried out by related cells of young Muslims, some of whom had returned from fighting in Syria.

Since then, Belgium has remained on high alert as it tries to curtail threats both at home and from militants who may return from the Middle East.

“We will only have certainty when the situation in Syria and Iraq is resolved,” one senior official said of the inquiries into the Brussels attacks. Those two countries have attracted over 400 Belgians to join the ranks of Islamist militants, according to a study by the Hague-based International Centre for Counter-Terrorism.

That figure makes Belgium one of the biggest contributors to foreign jihadists in the Middle East in proportion to its population.

As the Belgian capital prepares to mark Wednesday’s anniversary with ceremonies timed to the moment the bombers struck, authorities are still unsure just who in the IS group organized and ordered the attacks, even though 59 people are in custody and 60 on bail.

The most recent arrest was in January, of a man suspected of providing forged identity papers to Khalid El Bakraoui, the 27-year-old suicide bomber who killed 16 people on a train at the downtown Maelbeek metro station.

With soldiers still a permanent presence around Brussels’ transportation hubs, security officials told reporters in briefings ahead of the anniversary that there was still a risk that armed militants were still at large.

For Belgian security services, some communities can remain hard to penetrate, such as the tight-knit Muslim neighborhood of Molenbeek where the prime suspect of the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, hid near his family home for four months. His arrest triggered his associates to strike Brussels four days later.

Despite efforts to detect and discourage the influence of violent Islamist ideas, young men who engaged in petty crime remain vulnerable to it, officials said. But surveillance over potential jihadists has intensified in the past year, they added

Only five Belgians were detected trying to leave for Syria last year, with only one succeeding, officials said, marking a contrast from the previous years.

That, however, has raised concerns, a senior security official told reporters, since Islamic State appeared to be issuing instructions to followers to “attack infidels at home”.

Some 160 Belgian citizens remain in Syria, officials estimate, but some 80 children have been born to them there, creating fears of a new risk.

“These children could be tomorrow’s danger,” the official said. “They’ve seen atrocities, they’ve been brainwashed. Some of them already received military training. We really have to work with them on their return.”

(Reporting by Alastair Macdonald and Robert-Jan Bartunek; Edited by Vin Shahrestani; @macdonaldrtr)

Iraqi forces try to bring civilians out of east Mosul, U.S. pledges more support

A wounded displaced Iraqi girl and her family who had fled their homes wait to enter Hammam al-Alil camp south of Mosul, Iraq March 21, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

By Patrick Markey

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi government forces attempted to evacuate civilians from Mosul’s Islamic State-held Old City on Tuesday so that troops could clear the area, but militant snipers hampered the effort, Iraqi officers said.

They said the insurgents were also using civilians as human shields as government units edged toward the al-Nuri Mosque, the focus of recent fighting in the five-month-long campaign to crush Islamic State in the city that was once the de facto capital of their self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate.

As many as 600,000 civilians remain in the western sector of Mosul, complicating a battle being fought with artillery and air strikes as well as ground combat. Thousands have escaped in recent days.

“Our forces control around 60 percent of the west now,” Defence Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool told a news conference in eastern Mosul. “It’s the Old City now with small streets and it’s a hard fight with civilians inside. We are trying to evacuate them.

“We are a few hundred meters from the mosque now, we are advancing on al-Nuri. We know it means a lot to Daesh,” he said, using an Arab acronym for Islamic State.

The capture of the mosque would be a huge symbolic prize as well as strategic gain for the government as it was there where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al—Baghdadi declared the caliphate in July 2014 after the militants had captured large areas of Iraq and Syria.

Government forces backed by a U.S.-led international coalition retook several cities last year, liberated eastern Mosul in December, and are now closing in on the west, but the militants are putting up fierce resistance from the close-packed houses and narrow streets.

Baghdadi and other leaders have fled the city for the hinterlands, where Islamic State remnants may regroup and wage a new phase of insurgency. At the same time, IS forces in the Syrian city of Raqqa are under attack in a parallel conflict.

Brigadier General Saad Maan said soldiers had killed nine IS snipers on Tuesday and destroyed a bomb factory.

“There are lots of snipers on top of the buildings in the Old City around the al-Nuri Mosque. We need to evacuate the families from inside as they using them as a shield when we are advancing on the mosque,” he told the news conference.

No precise toll of civilian casualties has been given but a prominent Iraqi politician said last week that the number could be as high as 3,500 dead since the attack on western Mosul started in mid-February.

An emergency field hospital set up by the U.S. medical charity Samaritan’s Purse says it has treated more than 1,000 patients, many of them women and children, since January. They suffered wounds from gunfire, land mines, mortar rounds, car bombings and booby-traps.

Reporters at the frontline on Tuesday said clashes took place around the railway station in some areas troops had held a few days earlier. Troops fired rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine-guns at militants around the station as families ran across streets to avoid snipers

“We sitting inside our house and bullets were coming through our door” said one woman fleeing to government lines.

U.S. SUPPORT TO INCREASE

Saad Maan also said the bodies of a colonel and two other officers who had gone missing during the battle had been found. The colonel had been shot. But he said the men had not been captured by the insurgents.

An Interior Ministry official told Reuters on Monday that the insurgents had captured a police colonel and eight other officers after they ran out of ammunition during a skirmish. But a Rapid Response units spokesman denied this when asked for comment on Monday night.

The issue is sensitive as Islamic State have a record of torturing, mutilating and killing military and civilian captives, and such an incident could be a blow to troops’ morale.

The number of displaced people from both sides of Mosul since the start of the offensive has reached 355,000, according to government figures. Some 181,000 had poured out of western Mosul since the start of the operations to retake that side.

In Washington, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said he had won assurances of greater U.S. support in the war in talks on Monday with U.S. President Donald Trump. But Abadi cautioned that military might alone would not be sufficient.

He told a forum in Washington after his meeting with Trump that he had been told U.S. “support will not only continue but will accelerate.”

“But of course we have to be careful here,” he said. “We are not talking about military confrontation as such. Committing troops is one thing, while fighting terrorism is another thing.”

Abadi, who leads the Shi’ite majority government in Baghdad, said it would be crucial to win over the local population in Sunni-dominated Mosul to achieve lasting peace.

He is in Washington this week ahead of a gathering of world leaders of the coalition fighting Islamic State, who as well as waging war in Iraq and Syria have inspired attacks on civilian targets in Europe, Africa and elsewhere that have killed hundreds of people.

Click http://tmsnrt.rs/2mZWV4j for graphic on Battle for Mosul

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad, Writing by Angus MacSwan in Erbil; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

South Sudan government to blame for famine, still buying arms: U.N. report

Women and children wait to be registered prior to a food distribution carried out by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Thonyor, Leer state, South Sudan, February 26, 2017. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – South Sudan’s government is mainly to blame for famine in parts of the war-torn country, yet President Salva Kiir is still boosting his forces using millions of dollars from oil sales, according to a confidential United Nations report.

U.N. sanctions monitors said 97 percent of South Sudan’s known revenue comes from oil sales, a significant portion of which is now forward oil sales, and that at least half of the budget – “likely substantially more” – is devoted to security.

“Revenue from forward oil sales totaled approximately $243 million between late March and late October 2016,” the panel of U.N. monitors said in the report to the U.N. Security Council, seen by Reuters on Thursday.

“Despite the scale and scope of the political, humanitarian, and economic crises, the panel continues to uncover evidence of the ongoing procurement of weapons by the … Government for the SPLA (South Sudanese army), the National Security Service, and other associated forces and militias,” the report said.

The United Nations has declared a famine in some parts of the world’s youngest country, where nearly half its population – some 5.5 million people – face food shortages. A civil war erupted in 2013 when Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, fired his deputy Riek Machar, a Nuer, who has fled and is now in South Africa.

“The bulk of evidence suggests that the famine … has resulted from protracted conflict and, in particular, the cumulative toll of military operations undertaken by the SPLM/A in Government in southern Unity state; denial of humanitarian access, primarily by the SPLM/A in Government; and population displacement resulting from the war,” the report said.

The United Nations says at least one quarter of South Sudanese have been displaced since 2013.

‘NOT CORRECT’

South Sudan’s government rejected the report on Friday.

“We have not bought arms for the last of two to three years,” government spokesman Michael Makuei Lueth told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

“We have rights to buy arms for self-protection or self-defense … So this idea of the U.N. saying the government of South Sudan doesn’t care about its people and they are fan of buying arms all the time is not correct,” he said.

The annual report of the sanctions monitors to the 15-member Security Council comes ahead of a ministerial meeting of the body on South Sudan next Thursday, which is due to be chaired by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

While the previous U.S. administration of President Barack Obama was heavily involved in the birth of South Sudan, which gained independence from Sudan in 2011, and led Security Council efforts to try to end the civil war, the policy of new U.S. President Donald Trump toward the African state is unclear.

In December, the Security Council failed to adopt a U.S.-drafted resolution to impose an arms embargo and further sanctions on South Sudan despite warnings by U.N. officials of a possible genocide. The U.N. monitors again recommended in their report that the council impose an arms embargo on South Sudan.

The Security Council set up a targeted sanctions regime for South Sudan in March 2015 and has blacklisted six generals – three from each side of the conflict – by subjecting them to an asset freeze and travel ban.

The U.N. monitors said all parties to the conflict continue to commit widespread human rights violations “with near complete impunity and a lack of any credible effort to prevent these violations or to punish the perpetrators.”

U.N. peacekeepers have been in South Sudan since 2011.

(Additional reporting by Denis Dumo in Juba; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

Need to avoid civilian deaths weighs on minds of U.S. forces in Mosul battle

Displaced Iraqis flee their homes as Iraqi forces battle with Islamic State militants, in western Mosul, Iraq March 18, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

By Angus MacSwan

QAYYARA WEST AIRFIELD, Iraq (Reuters) – As the battle for Mosul moves to the narrow streets and densely packed houses of the Old City, U.S. artillery gunners and helicopter pilots supporting Iraqi forces face an age-old problem – how to avoid killing civilians.

They place their faith in precision missiles which can hit their target with great accuracy. But human instinct also comes into play against an Islamic State enemy which has used civilians as human shields and hides in houses and mosques.

“Our mission is to find and destroy ISIS. We are not here to kill the wrong people,” said Captain Lucas Gebhart, commander of the 4/6th Cavalry’s Bravo Troop of Apache attack helicopters.

The troop is based at this airfield about 60 kms south of Mosul, as is a rocket battery which fires into west Mosul.

A major site at the height of the U.S. occupation, Islamic State captured Qayyara from Iraqi government forces in 2014 and destroyed it. The Iraqis retook it in July last year, and now the U.S. Army is building it up again as a support base for the Mosul operation.

Gebhart, who wore a U.S. Cavalry hat with a crossed-sabre insignia along with his regular uniform, has been here since December. The troop flies close support for the Iraqi army and escorts medical evacuations. It has had more than 200 engagements with Islamic State fighters in that time, he said.

“We fly every day, weather permitting. We are firing missiles most of the time,” Gebhart told reporters.

The Iraqi army started its offensive on Mosul, Islamic State’s last stronghold in Iraq, in October and retook the east side of the city, bisected by the Tigris river, in January. The west, including the Old City, is much harder going.

“The west side is very congested and it will present new challenges for us. We realize the need to be careful as we go forward,” Gebhart said.

One of those challenges is avoiding civilian casualties in a conflict where fighters are mixed in among the population and sometimes hiding behind them.

“Everyone that flies with me are fathers and husbands, so we are very deliberate to avoid casualties we don’t want. We use guided missiles. The things we shoot from an Apache, they go where we want them to go,” Gebhart said.

Targets are identified and approved by the Iraqi army. But circumstances can change in a moment.

“I have personal experience of human shields. I engaged a target and they pulled a family of women and children out of a house. The missile was already in the air but I was able to move it,” he said.

“You’ve got a little bit of time. If something happens post-missile release, we have procedures to move it.”

Gebhart, aged 32, joined the military as a teenager after the 9/11 attacks on the United States. He served in the 82nd Airborne in Iraq in 2003 before going to West Point and becoming a cavalry officer. He also served two tours of duty in Afghanistan.

“I love my job. I don’t lose sleep over it,” he said.

WE LOVE TO FIRE

In another section of the base, the 18th Field Artillery “Odin” battery operates a High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), fired off the back of trucks.

On Friday afternoon, the battery fired 10 rockets, each worth about $100,000, in the space of about 20 minutes. They headed skywards in a cloud of white smoke and a flash of fire as a Bob Marley song played from a platoon tent. They would reach their target in east Mosul in about a minute.

Lieutenant Mary Floyd explained that the rockets were GPS-guided. All fire missions were approved by senior officers at the Combined Joint Operations Center and the coordinates were sent to the battery through computers.

“The rockets go really high so we have to clear airspace -– civilian and military -– along the flight path. We have had to end missions because they saw aviation,” she said.

Although rockets are often aimed at targets in built-up, populated areas, the battery was confident they would hit what they intended. If the rockets are off target, they do not detonate, she said.

“They have very, very low collateral damage, so we like to use them a lot,” Floyd said, using the military term for civilian casualties. “When the rockets hit they land at near a vertical angle. That really confines the blast to one house.”

The battery has fired hundreds of rockets since deploying to Qayyara, she said.

“The tempo changes. We’ll go a couple of days without orders. Then we might be firing all night.”

The issue of civilian casualties has dogged the U.S. military during its long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, from shootings at check-points to drone bombings. In the battle for Mosul, Iraqi and U.S.-led coalition war planes have also been pounding parts of the city.

Figures of such casualties are hard to come by. Washington has stressed its forces take every effort to avoid them.

On Tuesday, a prominent Iraqi politician and businessman, Khamis Khanjar, said at least 3,500 civilians have been killed in west Mosul since the offensive closed in on it.

The U.S.-led coalition said in a statement that up to March 4, it had assessed that “more likely than not”, at least 220 civilians had been unintentionally killed by coalition strikes since the start of Operation Inherent Resolve.

While the men and women of Odin battery were fully aware of the risk, they believe in their work.

“We love to fire. It makes me very happy,” Floyd said. “At night it is very beautiful.”

(Editing by Hugh Lawson)

In week of Middle East talks, Trump envoy avoids disruption

Jason Greenblatt (L), U.S. President Donald Trump's Middle East envoy meets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem March 13, 2017. Courtesy Matty Stern/U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv/Handout via REUTERS

By Luke Baker

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy has spent the week shuttling between Jerusalem, Ramallah and the Jordanian capital Amman on his first official visit to the region, pursuing quiet diplomacy and avoiding controversy.

A real estate lawyer who has worked for Trump for 20 years, Jason Greenblatt has met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayhu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Jordan’s King Abdullah and other senior officials during a busy round of talks that U.S. diplomats have described as a “listening tour”.

Rather than some of the bold pronouncements Trump himself has made on the region – last month he said he didn’t mind if there was a one-state or two-state solution to the conflict — Greenblatt, 49, has been circumspect, issuing a few tweets but not speaking to the media.

“President Abbas and I discussed how to make progress toward peace, building capacity of Palestinian security forces and stopping incitement,” he wrote on Twitter, preceded by a picture of him shaking hands warmly with the Palestinian leader.

The readout from the Palestinians and King Abdullah after their meetings was positive, if largely sticking to standard diplomatic pronouncements about the importance of peace negotiations and their ability to transform the region.

Social media commentators were quick to point out that Greenblatt, an Orthodox Jew, had shown a notable degree of religious flexibility during his visit that may reflect a desire to be open and diplomatic: he has not worn his kippa, a skull cap worn by religious Jewish men, all week.

In official pictures, Greenblatt, a father of six who studied at a Talmudic high school and Yeshiva University, is usually seen wearing a black kippa, the type favor by devout men. Before landing in Israel, he posted a picture of his prayer shawl and other religious accoutrements.

“ULTIMATE DEAL”?

One of the criticisms Palestinians have made of Trump is that he is too pro-Israel, especially with his promise during the campaign to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and his soft-pedalling on Israeli settlement-building.

The settlements are built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem – seized by Israel in a 1967 war and occupied for nearly 50 years – where Palestinians want to establish their state and capital.

Since taking office, Trump has modified his positions to an extent, rowing back on any quick embassy move and calling on Netanyahu during their White House meeting last month to “hold back on settlements for a little bit”.

The main point of discussion during five hours of talks between Greenblatt and Netanyahu on Tuesday was settlements, an Israeli official said, with the two sides seeking to come to an accommodation over how much Israel can build and where.

Netanyahu and Greenblatt will meet for more talks later on Thursday, before the U.S. envoy returns to Washington.

“Our intention is to reach an agreed policy for building in settlements which is agreeable to us, not only to the Americans,” Netanyahu said ahead of the meeting.

“Of course, this will help Israel after a period of many years during which we were not involved in such processes.”

The Obama administration said Israel’s settlement building was jeopardizing peace efforts, and Abbas has said they must stop before negotiations can resume.

U.S. officials indicated that Greenblatt, who is officially Trump’s special representative for international negotiations, would report back directly to the president on his trip, rather than to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

They said it was the first of numerous visits he is expected to make to the region as the Trump administration pursues its goal of reviving negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and striking what Trump calls “the ultimate deal”.

(Additional reporting by Ori Lewis in Jerusalem and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Writing by Luke Baker; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Iraqi troops seize main bridge, advance on mosque in battle for Mosul

Members of the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) sit in a military vehicle during a battle between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants, in the city of Mosul, Iraq March 15, 2017. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani

By Patrick Markey and John Davison

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi government forces battling Islamic State for Mosul took control of a main bridge over the Tigris river on Wednesday and advanced towards the mosque where the group’s leader declared a caliphate in 2014, federal police said.

The seizure of the Iron Bridge, linking eastern Mosul with the militant-held Old City on the west side, means the government holds three of the five bridges over the Tigris and bolsters Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s assertion that the battle is reaching its final stages.

The bridge, which was damaged in fighting late last year, was captured by federal police and Interior Ministry Rapid Response units, a police statement said.

The gains were made in heavy fighting in which troops fought street-by-street against an enemy using suicide car bombs, mortar and sniper fire, and grenade-dropping drones to defend what was once their main stronghold.

“Our troops are making a steady advance … and we are now less than 800 meters from the mosque,” a federal police spokesman said.

Losing the city would be a huge blow to Islamic State as it has served as the group’s de facto capital since its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed himself head of a caliphate spanning Iraq and Syria from the Nuri Mosque in July 2014.

The capture of the mosque would thus be a huge symbolic victory as well as a concrete gain. But many hard days of fighting could still lie ahead as government forces try to make headway in the streets and narrow alleyways of the Old City.

Islamic State fighters have booby-trapped houses, and government forces will also be fighting amongst civilians, ruling out the extensive use of air and artillery support.

Heavy fighting was also reported on Wednesday around the Mosul museum by journalists and combatants. An Islamic State suicide car bomb exploded near the museum. Helicopters strafed the ground with machinegun fire and missiles.

DECISIVE STAGE

The intense combat marked a decisive stage in the battle for Mosul which started on Oct. 17 last year, and in the wider struggle against Islamic State.

In neighboring Syria, three separate forces are advancing on the city of Raqqa, the main Syrian city under Islamic State control.

As well as waging jihad in Iraq and Syria, the militants have inspired attacks in cities in Europe, Africa and elsewhere that have killed hundreds of civilians.

In Baghdad, Abadi said: “Daesh (Islamic State) become day after day surrounded inside a tight area and they are in their final days.”

In a news conference on Tuesday night, he warned the insurgents that they must surrender or face death.

“We will preserve families of Daesh who are civilians but we will punish the terrorists and bring them to justice if they surrender,” he said. “They are cornered and if they will not surrender. They will definitely get killed.”Iraqi officers said cloudy weather hampered air cover on Wednesday morning. Police commander Younes Jabouri said troops were moving forward but it was not easy because of the weather.

“We’re on the edge of the Old City. There are lots of shops, garages and markets and a lot of residents and small streets and alleyways. It takes time because there are a lot of civilians and Daesh uses them as human shields, they don’t let them leave,” he said.

Residents have streamed out of western neighborhoods recaptured by the government, many desperately hungry and traumatized by living under Islamic State’s harsh rule.

Haider Ibrahim Rohawi, a market trader, was fleeing Lagedat district with his family, pushing his possessions in a handcart.

“Yesterday afternoon the army came. Just a day before Daesh were in our houses with us. There was a lot of fighting. They shot one of the Daesh right in front of me. Everyone is threatened by Daesh, that’s why we leave. The area is freed. We have no power, no fuel, nothing.”

As many as 600,000 civilians are still trapped with the militants inside Mosul. The Ministry of Immigration and Displacement said on Tuesday that in recent days, almost 13,000 displaced people from western Mosul had been given assistance and temporary accommodation each day, adding to the 200,000 already displaced.

Staff Brigadier Falah al-Obeidi of the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) told Reuters his troops on Wednesday took control over the Dor al-Sikak and al-Nafut areas, site of the militants’ main weapons stores in Mosul just west of the Old City.

“Yesterday resistance was very strong in that area. It’s where their stores are, and the people living there, both men and women, are with them (supporters or members),” he said.

Aerial surveillance photos showed women carrying guns, Obeidi said.

CTS troops also brought in a Russian-made missile and two warheads. They had found 40 more such missiles stored in homes in Dor al-Sikak.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Writing by Angus MacSwan in Erbil; Editing by Louise Ireland and Dominic Evans)

No famine in Yemen but over half on the brink: U.N.-backed report

A malnourished boy lies on a bed outside his family's hut in al-Tuhaita district of the Red Sea province of Hodaida, Yemen September 26, 2016. REUTERS/Abduljabbar Zeyad

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – A U.N.-backed report on Yemen has found no full-blown famine in the country but said 60 percent of Yemenis, or 17 million people, are in “crisis” or “emergency” food situations, 20 percent more than in June.

The World Food Programme said in a statement on Wednesday that the governorates of Taiz and Hodeidah along the Red Sea risked slipping into famine if they did not receive more aid. Both have long traditions as food-producing regions.

The crisis follows two years of civil war pitting the Iran-allied Houthi group against a Saudi-backed coalition, which has caused economic collapse and severely restricted the food and fuel imports on which Yemen depends.

“If humanitarian actors do not access all the people in need by the coming months, the situation may deteriorate dramatically,” the report said.

Taiz and Hodeidah governorates, home to important Yemeni ports, “have the highest rates of global acute malnutrition in the country, ranging from 17 percent in Taiz City to 25 percent in Hodeidah,” the WFP said.

“The emergency threshold set by the World Health Organization is 15 percent,” it added.

The report was written by an expert team using the globally recognized IPC methodology. The IPC, or Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, is a system of analyzing food security on a five-point scale, where five is “famine”.

The report, drawing on analysis from 69 experts from Yemen’s government and regions, the United Nations and non-governmental institutions, said 10.2 million people were at phase three, or “crisis”, and 6.8 million at phase four, or “emergency”.

The worst affected governorates – those in the emergency phase – were Lahej, Taiz, Abyan, Sa’ada, Hajjah, Hodeidah and Shabwah, it said. Taiz, where heavy fighting looks likely to continue, has seen its biggest spike in livestock and commodity prices since the war escalated in 2015.

Yemen is one of four current famine or near-famine situations, along with South Sudan, northeast Nigeria and Somalia, with more than 20 million people at risk of starvation in the next six months.

Last month the U.N. said more than $4 billion was needed by the end of March to stave off starvation in the four countries on the brink of starvation.

U.N. officials say that once a famine is officially declared, it is usually too late because large numbers of people have already died.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

WFP head says ‘race against time’ under way to prevent Yemen famine

Ertharin Cousin, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme, speaks during a news conference discussing the latest challenges the agency is facing in Yemen, in ?Amman, Jordan, March 13, 2017. REUTERS/Muhammad Hamed

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) – Aid workers are in a “race against time” to prevent famine threatening millions of people in Yemen, a senior U.N. official said in Monday.

“We have about three months of food stored inside the country today,” Ertharin Cousin, executive director of the World Food Programme, told reporters in Amman after a three-day visit to the war-torn country.

“We do not have enough food to support the scale-up that is required to ensure that we can avoid a famine.”

After almost two years of war between a Saudi-led Arab coalition and the Iran-allied Houthi movement, 7.3 million Yemenis are classed by the U.N. as “severely food insecure”.

“It is a race against time, and if we do not scale up assistance to reach those who are severely food insecure, we will see famine-like conditions in some of the worst-hit and inaccessible areas which means that people will die,” Cousin said.

WFP was able to reach a record 4.9 million needy people in Yemen last month. But Cousin said inadequate funding meant it was forced to reduce food rations to stretch assistance to more people.

“What we have been doing is taking a limited amounts of food that we have in the country, and spreading it as far as possible, which means that we have been giving 35 percent rations on most months, we need to get to 100 percent rations,” she added.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said last month Yemen’s estimated supplies of wheat would run out at the end of March.

The U.N. has said it will need around $2 billion this year for humanitarian work in Yemen and calls the country the “largest food security emergency in the world”.

(Additional reporting by Bushra Shakhshir; editing by Andrew Roche)

IS Mosul commander killed, government forces battle for bridge

A tank of Iraqi rapid response forces fire against Islamic State militants at the Bab al-Tob area in Mosul, Iraq, March 14, 2017. REUTERS/Ari Jalal

By Patrick Markey and Abdelaziz Boumzar

MOSUL, Iraq, (Reuters) – Iraqi government forces killed the Islamic State commander of Mosul’s Old City on Tuesday as the battle for the militants’ last stronghold in Iraq focused on a bridge crossing the Tigris river.

As fighting intensified on Tuesday after the previous day’s heavy rains, civilians streamed out of western neighborhoods recaptured by the government, cold and hungry but relieved to be free of the militants’ grip.

IS snipers were slowing the advance of Interior Ministry Rapid Response units on the Iron Bridge linking western and eastern Mosul but the elite forces were still inching forward, officers said.

Government forces also pushed into areas of western Mosul, Islamic State’s last redoubt in the city that has been the de facto capital of their self-declared caliphate.

Federal police killed the military commander of the Old City, Abu Abdul Rahman al-Ansary, during operations to clear Bab al-Tob district, a federal police officer said. With many IS leaders having already retreated from Mosul, Ansary’s death comes as blow to the militants as they defend their shrinking area of control street-by-street and house-by-house.

Capturing the Iron Bridge would mean Iraqi forces hold three of the five bridges in Mosul that span the Tigris, all of which have been damaged by the militants and U.S.-led air strikes. The southernmost two have already been retaken.

“We are still moving toward the Iron Bridge. We are taking out snipers hiding in the surrounding building, we are still pushing for the Iron Bridge,” Brigadier General Mahdi Abbas Abdullah of the Rapid Response force told Reuters.

Near the Mosul Museum, Iraq forces used armored vehicles and tanks to attack snipers pinning down troops clearing areas around the bridge.

An air strike targeting one Islamic State position hit a building, engulfing nearby troops in smoke and dust.

Since starting the offensive in October, Iraqi forces with U.S.-led coalition support have retaken eastern Mosul and about 30 percent of the west from the militants, who are outnumbered but fiercely defending their last stronghold in Iraq.

For much of Tuesday, the troops were within 100m (330 feet) of the bridge.

“It’s very key for our forces to secure the riverside and prevent Daesh militants from turning around our advancing forces,” a Rapid Response spokesman said in the morning, using an Arab acronym for Islamic State.

They expected to gain control of the Iron Bridge and the nearby area by the end of the day, he said.

“Seizing the bridge will help further tighten the noose around Daesh fighters entrenched inside the old city,” he said.

HEAVY SHELLING

The boom of shelling and heavy machinegun fire could be heard from the center of Mosul and helicopter gunships strafed the ground from above on Tuesday morning.

Amid the combat, a steady stream of refugees trudged out of the western districts, carrying suitcases, bottles of water and other possessions. Some pushed children and sick elderly relatives in handcarts and wheelbarrows.

Soldiers packed them into trucks on the Mosul-Baghdad highway to be taken to processing areas. Most left in the dark early morning hours or after the army recaptured their neighborhoods. Food had been scarce, they said.

“We fled at 5 a.m. (0200 GMT) after the army had arrived. There has been a lot of shelling by Daesh,” said Hamid Hadi, a teacher. “Mostly we’ve been eating water mixed with tomatoes.”

Ashraf Ali, a nurse who escaped with his wife and two children, said mortar rounds were falling as they fled. They took advantage of the army retaking their district to get out.

“Daesh wanted us to move to their areas but we escaped when the army arrived,” he said.

As many as 600,000 civilians are caught with the militants inside Mosul, which Iraqi forces have effectively sealed off from the remaining territory that Islamic State controls in Iraq and Syria. The Iraqi forces include army, special forces, Kurdish peshmerga and Shi’ite militias.

More than 200,000 Mosul residents have been displaced since the start of the campaign in October. The Ministry of Immigration and Displacement said on Tuesday that in recent days, almost 13,000 displaced people from western Mosul had been received seeking assistance and temporary accommodation each day.

“Whenever we advance there are more people coming out,” said one Iraqi officer directing refugee transport. “There are more people on this side of the city and people are trying to leave because there is no food and no supplies in their area.”

Losing Mosul would be a major strike against Islamic State. It is by far the largest city the militants have held since their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed himself leader of a caliphate spanning Iraq and Syria from a mosque in Mosul in the summer of 2014.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad, Writing by Angus MacSwan in Erbil, Editing by Ralph Boulton)

At least 40 killed in Damascus bombing targeting Shi’ites

Syrian army soldiers and civilians inspect the damage at the site of an attack by two suicide bombers in Damascus, Syria March 11, 2017. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki

BEIRUT/DAMASCUS/BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A double bomb attack targeting Shi’ite pilgrims in Damascus killed at least 40 Iraqis and wounded 120 more who were going to pray at a nearby shrine, the Iraqi foreign ministry said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Saturday’s attack, which the Hezbollah-run al-Manar TV station said had been carried out by two suicide bombers.

Footage broadcast by Syrian state TV showed two badly damaged buses with their windows blown out. The area was splattered with blood and shoes were scattered on the ground.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been supported in the country’s war by Shi’ite militias from countries including Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.

The attack took place at a bus station where the pilgrims had been brought to visit the nearby Bab al-Saghir cemetery, named after one of the seven gates of the Old City of Damascus.

The second blast went off some 10 minutes after the first, inflicting casualties on civil defence workers who had gathered to tend to the casualties, the Damascus correspondent for al-Manar told the station by phone.

The pilgrims were due to pray at the cemetery after visiting the Sayeda Zeinab shrine just outside Damascus, he said.

Sayeda Zeinab – the granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammad – is venerated by Shi’ites and her shrine is a site of mass pilgrimage for Shi’ites from across the world. It has also been a magnet for Shi’ite militiamen in Syria.

Iran has backed Assad in the conflict that erupted in 2011.

Last June, Islamic State claimed responsibility for bomb attacks near the Sayyida Zeinab shrine.

The Lebanese group Hezbollah is also fighting in support of Assad.

(Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Toby Chopra and Alexander Smith)