Tag Archives: Red Cross

More than 200 killed in Sierra Leone as mudslide sweeps away homes

A man walks under umbrella in water covered street in Freetown, Sierra Leone August 14, 2017 in this picture obtained from social media.

By Christopher Johnson and Umaru Fofana

FREETOWN, (Reuters) – A mudslide killed more than 200 people on the outskirts of Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown on Monday, sweeping away homes and leaving residents desperate for news of missing family members.

The Red Cross said at least 205 bodies had been taken to the central morgue in Freetown. Police and military personnel were at the scene in the mountain town of Regent searching for people trapped in the debris.

Many people living at the foot of Mount Sugar Loaf were asleep when the mountainside collapsed, burying dozens of houses, including two-storey buildings, witnesses said.

People inspect the damage after a mudslide in the mountain town of Regent, Sierra Leone August 14, 2017.

People inspect the damage after a mudslide in the mountain town of Regent, Sierra Leone August 14, 2017. REUTERS/Ernest Henry

Standing in the rain, residents sobbed as they mourned family members and waited for news of those missing. Adama Kamara wept as she described a failed attempt to rescue her 7-week-old child.

“We were inside when we heard the mudslide approaching. I attempted to grab my baby but the mud was too fast. She was covered alive,” said Kamara, who escaped with bruises. She said she was not sure what had happened to her husband.

A man said he had left early in the morning to buy bread. When he returned, his wife, children, siblings and in-laws were all dead.

The death toll is expected to rise as more bodies are recovered, Red Cross spokesman Abu Bakarr Tarawallie said.

Vice President Victor Foh told Reuters at the scene: “It is likely that hundreds are lying dead underneath the rubble.” He said a number of illegal buildings had been erected in the area.

“The disaster is so serious that I myself feel broken,” he said. “We’re trying to cordon the area. Evacuate the people.”

An excavator plowed away at the mountainside and ambulances rushed back and forth to the city center with bodies and wounded, but rescue efforts were hampered by bad roads and the weather, a Reuters witness said.

Community chief Fatmata Tarawallie said she had started calling for help at 4 a.m. (0400 GMT) but that it did not come soon enough.

“Now our community has sunk,” she said.

Mudslides and floods are fairly common during the rainy season in West Africa, where deforestation and poor town planning has put residents at risk.

 

(Additional reporting and writing by Nellie Peyton; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

 

Red Cross finds 115 bodies in CAR diamond-mining town

DAKAR (Reuters) – Red Cross workers have found 115 bodies in Central African Republic’s diamond-mining town of Bangassou after several days of militia attacks, the president of the aid group’s local branch said on Wednesday.

The battle for control of the town marks a new escalation in a conflict that began in 2013 when mainly Muslim Seleka fighters ousted then-President Francois Bozize, prompting reprisal killings from Christian militias.

Recent clashes have centered on diamond-rich central and southern areas of the country, with rival militias battling among themselves to control them, aid workers say.

“We found 115 bodies and 34 have been buried,” Antoine Mbao Bogo told Reuters by phone from the capital Bangui. “They died in various ways: from knives, from clubs and bullet wounds.”

A senior U.N. official had previously reported 26 civilian deaths.

Hundreds of militia with heavy weaponry seized the southeastern border town of Bangassou at the weekend and U.N. peacekeepers have since then been trying to wrest it back.

The deployment of extra U.N. troops and air strikes have helped peacekeepers regain control of strategic points, U.N. spokesman Herve Verhoosel said on Wednesday.

Clashes between militias in the central town of Bria have killed five people, he added. The U.N. is also seeking to verify the deaths of up to 100 people in the town of Alindao.

(Reporting by Emma Farge; additional reporting by Tom Miles in Geneva; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Richard Lough)

Exclusive: Situation in Syria constitutes international armed conflict – Red Cross

A Syrian national flag flutters as Qasioun mountain is seen in the background from Damascus, Syria April 7, 2017. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The situation in Syria “amounts to an international armed conflict” following U.S. missile strikes on a Syrian airbase, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told Reuters on Friday.

The United States fired cruise missiles at a base from which President Donald Trump said a deadly chemical weapons attack had been launched on Tuesday, the first direct U.S. assault on the government of Bashar al-Assad in six years of civil war.

“Any military operation by a state on the territory of another without the consent of the other amounts to an international armed conflict,” ICRC spokeswoman Iolanda Jaquemet told Reuters in Geneva in response to a query.

“So according to available information – the U.S. attack on Syrian military infrastructure – the situation amounts to an international armed conflict.”

Previous air strikes on Syrian territory by a U.S.-led coalition have been against only the militant group Islamic State, which is also the enemy of the Syrian government.

Russia has carried out air strikes in tandem with its ally Syria since Sept. 2015, while Iranian militias are also fighting alongside the troops of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

ICRC officials were raising the U.S. attack with U.S. authorities as part of its ongoing confidential dialogue with parties to the conflict, Jaquemet said, declining to give details.

The ICRC, guardian of the Geneva Conventions setting down the rules of war, declared Syria an internal armed conflict – or civil war, in layman’s terms – in July 2012.

Under international humanitarian law, whether a conflict is internal or international, civilians must be spared and medical facilities protected. Warring parties must observe the key principles of precaution and proportionality and distinguish between combatants and civilians.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Andrew Roche)

World has just months to stop starvation in Yemen, Somalia: Red Cross

People queue to collect food rations at a food distribution center in Sanaa, Yemen March 21, 2017. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The world has got just three to four months to save millions of people in Yemen and Somalia from starvation, as drought and war wreck crops and block aid across the region, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Wednesday.

The agency said it needed $300 million to fund its work in those countries and other trouble spots in South Sudan and northeast Nigeria.

“We have probably a window of three to four months to avoid a worst case scenario,” Dominik Stillhart, the ICRC’s director of operations worldwide, told a Geneva news briefing.

“We have a kind of perfect storm where protracted conflict is overlapped, exacerbated by natural hazard, drought in particular in the Horn of Africa that is leading to the situation we are facing now,” he said.

More than 20 million people are facing famine in Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and northeast Nigeria, say aid agencies.

Cholera, which can be deadly for children, is on the rise in Somalia, while an average of 20 people in Yemen are dying each day from disease or war wounds, ICRC officials said.

The ICRC appealed for $400 million for its operations in the four countries this year, but has received only $100 million so far, it said.

The United Nations has appealed for about $5.6 billion, bringing total funding needs to $6 billion, Stillhart said.

“There are significant needs and of course there are serious concerns in terms of having funding available sufficiently fast in order to avert what I said was a large-scale starvation,” he said.

“In 2011 the response was too slow and too late leading to starvation of 260,000 people in Somalia alone,” he warned.

Robert Mardini, ICRC regional director for the Middle East, said that an ICRC team who provided aid to wounded refugees after a helicopter attack killed more than 40 on their boat off the Yemen coast last Friday had collected “evidence”.

The evidence and ICRC concerns were shared with the Saudi-led coalition as well as the Houthi side, he said, declining to give more details.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, editing by Tom Miles)

Islamic State suspected of killing six Afghan Red Cross workers: officials

Logo of International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Courtesy of Wiki Commons

By Bashir Ansari

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Islamic State gunmen were suspected of killing at least six Afghan employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Wednesday as they carried supplies to areas in the north of the country hit by deadly snow storms, government officials said.

Another two employees were unaccounted for after the attack in Afghanistan’s Jowzjan province, ICRC said, but the aid group did not know who was responsible or why the convoy was targeted.

“This is a despicable act. Nothing can justify the murder of our colleagues and dear friends,” the head of the ICRC delegation in Afghanistan, Monica Zanarelli, said in a statement.

The aid workers were in a convoy carrying supplies to areas hit by snow storms when they were attacked by suspected Islamic State gunmen, Lotfullah Azizi, the Jowzjan provincial governor, told Reuters.

“Daesh is very active in that area,” he said, using an alternate name for Islamic State, which has made limited inroads in Afghanistan but has carried out increasingly deadly attacks.

A storm dumped as much as two meters (6.5 feet) of snow on many areas of Afghanistan over the weekend, according to officials, killing more than 100 people.

Three drivers and five field officers were on their way to deliver livestock materials to those affected by the snow storms when they were attacked, the ICRC statement said.

“These staff members were simply doing their duty, selflessly trying to help and support the local community,” ICRC president Peter Maurer said.

SEARCH OPERATION

Jawzjan police chief Rahmatullah Turkistani said the workers’ bodies had been brought to the provincial capital and a search operation launched to find the two missing ICRC employees.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said his group was not involved in the attack and promised that Taliban members would “put all their efforts into finding the perpetrators”.

Last month, a Spanish ICRC employee was released less than a month after he was kidnapped by unidentified gunmen in northern Afghanistan.

That staff member was traveling with three Afghan colleagues between Mazar-i-Sharif and Kunduz on Dec. 19 when gunmen stopped the vehicles.

The other Afghan ICRC staff were immediately released.

In a recent summary of its work in Afghanistan last year, the ICRC said increasing security issues had made it difficult to provide aid to many parts of the country.

“Despite it all, the ICRC has remained true to its commitment to the people of Afghanistan, as it has throughout the last 30 years of its continuous presence in the country,” the statement said.

Zanarelli said it was still not clear how the deadly attack might change ICRC operations.

(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni and Josh Smith in Kabul; Editing by Nick Macfie and Ken Ferris)

Philippines ready food, shelter as super typhoon Haima advances

Evacuees from the coastal villages take shelter inside an evacuation center as Typhoon Haima locally name Lawin approaches, in Alcala town, Cagayan province, north of Manila

By Beh Lih Yi

JAKARTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Aid agencies were on standby on Wednesday to respond to the strongest typhoon to threaten the Philippines in three years, which was due to make landfall later in the day with widespread damage expected.

Typhoon Haima has been labeled a category 5 storm on a scale of 1 to 5 by Tropical Storm Risk and could cause flooding, landslides and storm surges of up to five meters (16.5 ft), the weather bureau said.

The Philippine authorities have raised storm warning signals for the northern and eastern parts of main island of Luzon, and ordered evacuation with some flights suspended and sea travel banned.

Save the Children said it has stockpiles of relief items – including emergency shelter kits, hygiene kits, water and sanitation items – which are kept in warehouses and ready to be dispatched.

“Typhoon Haima is bearing down on the northern Philippines and looks capable of causing significant damage to homes, and community infrastructure,” the aid agency’s country director for the Philippines Ned Olney said.

“With such powerful winds and many homes situated along the coast, the potential for damage is high.”

Olney said the children’s charity was concerned about the impact of the storm on children, who are particularly vulnerable during emergencies.

The Philippine Red Cross said its staff and emergency response teams have been placed on “high alert” and are ready to deploy as Haima could have “significant humanitarian impact” if it continues on its projected course.

The aid agency was working with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) to ready tarpaulins, blankets, sleeping mats and other essentials for 20,000 families.

Typhoon Haima poses a serious threat to local food security, as Central Luzon is where most of the country’s rice is grown.

“The country’s major river and catch basins are also located in Luzon, which could overflow if heavy rains continue,” the IFRC said in a statement.

Children’s charity Plan International also said it was on standby to families in the typhoon’s path were given food, shelter, clean water and basic sanitation as quickly as possible.

Haima was approaching the Philippines with maximum sustained winds of 225kph and gusts of 315kph, according to weather officials.

The Philippines is one of the most disaster-hit countries in the world, suffering an average of 20 major typhoons each year. Haima is the 12th typhoon to hit the Southeast Asian nation this year.

Super Typhoon Haiyan devastated the central Philippines in 2013 and killed at least 6,000 people.

(Reporting by Beh Lih Yi @behlihyi, Editing by Katie Nguyen. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Britain to take in unaccompanied migrant children from camps

A young migrant pulls a trolley in a muddy field at a camp of makeshift shelters for migrants and asylum-seekers from Iraq, Kurdistan, Iran and Syria, called the Grande Synthe jungle, near Calais, France,

LONDON/PARIS (Reuters) – Britain will honor a commitment to take in migrant children from the “Jungle” camp in the French port city of Calais, interior minister Amber Rudd said on Monday, urging France to help her speed the process.

Rudd said progress had been made at a meeting with French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve to help resettle unaccompanied children in the camp to Britain or to a safe children’s center while any necessary paperwork is processed.

Britain has been accused of dragging its heels on helping move the around 1,000 unaccompanied children in the Jungle, an overcrowded camp which is home to nearly 10,000 people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.

Paris has said the camp will be demolished soon.

“The UK government has made clear its commitment to resettle vulnerable children under the Immigration Act and ensure that those with links to the UK are brought here using the Dublin regulation,” Rudd told parliament.

Under EU rules known as the Dublin regulation, asylum seekers must make an initial claim in the first country they reach, but can have their application examined in another if, for example, they have relatives living there.

“We have made good progress today but there is much more work to do,” Rudd said, referring to the meeting with Cazeneuve where the two sides agreed to speed up the process of moving the children before the camp is demolished.

Rudd said more than 80 unaccompanied children have been accepted for transfer under the Dublin regulation since the beginning of this year and urged France to come up with a list of those who are also eligible to move under EU rules.

Earlier, Cazeneuve said he would press the case for Britain to honor its commitment to take in the children after the Red Cross charity said many had been held back by bureaucracy.

“Of the estimated 1,000 unaccompanied children who are currently living in the Calais Jungle, 178 have been identified as having family ties to the UK. This gives them the right to claim asylum in the same country,” the Red Cross said.

Calais is one of several places in western Europe faced with huge build-ups of migrants.

More than 11,000 were rescued in just 48 hours last week off the coast of Libya as they sought to cross the sea to Europe.

(Reporting by Brian Love and Michel Rose in Paris, Elizabeth Piper in London,; Editing by Stephen Addison)

Floods left thousands with nothing, Red Cross emergency appeal

A man throws a briefcase that was caught in the floods in Wellampitiya

By Magdalena Mis

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Floods in Sri Lanka which have forced more than 350,000 people from their homes have left some families with nothing, the Red Cross said on Wednesday as it launched an emergency appeal to deliver relief to tens of thousands of people in the country.

Last week’s floods, considered the worst natural disaster in the Indian Ocean region since a 2004 tsunami, destroyed more than 125,000 houses and killed at least 92 people, with a further 109 feared trapped beneath landslides.

“This disaster hit families living in both rural and urban areas,” Igor Dmitryuk, head of office at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Sri Lanka, said in a statement.

“Some lost everything and the priority is to meet their immediate needs with food, clean water, clothing and household items,” he said.

The appeal for 3.6 million Swiss francs ($3.6 million) will help 40,000 people over the next 18 months with relief items, cash transfers and guidance on safer shelter construction as they rebuild their homes, he said.

It will also provide grants for community projects to boost resilience in rural areas, and go towards repairing damaged irrigation canals and other infrastructure.

Days of torrential rain triggered floods and two landslides in the Kegalle district, about 75 miles (120 kms) east of the capital, Colombo.

Red Cross workers will ensure that people at temporary shelters have access to safe water and sanitation as part of a health and awareness campaign to prevent the spread of disease.

“There will be a lot of standing water as the floods recede which heightens the risk of disease, particularly in urban areas,” Dmitryuk said.

“We need to be vigilant to avert any public health crisis, particularly as further rains are forecast with the start of the monsoon.”

The IFRC said its teams have been helping in search and rescue efforts in the five worst affected districts of the country, as well as providing psychological support and first aid, reaching 140,000 people.

On Monday, the Sri Lankan government estimated the cost of floods and landslides at between at least $1.5 billion and $2 billion.

($1 = 0.9911 Swiss francs)

(Reporting by Magdalena Mis; Editing by Jo Griffin.; Please credit Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

Red Cross delivers aid to besieged Damascus suburb after four years

A view shows deserted street targeted by snipers loyal to Syria's President Assad in the Damascus suburb of Harasta

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Aid from the Red Cross and Syrian Red Crescent entered the besieged Damascus suburb of Harasta for the first time in four years on Wednesday, a spokesman said.

A convoy of trucks jointly organised with the United Nations carried food, hygiene equipment and medicine destined for Harasta’s entire population of around 10,000 people, Pawel Krzysiek said in a statement.

Harasta is in the Eastern Ghouta region, east of Damascus, which is under rebel control. It is one of several areas around the Syrian capital which are sealed off by government forces.

(Reporting by John Davison; Editing by Catherine Evans)

Humanitarian Aid sets off to besieged Syria after blocked for months

A bird flies near a torn Syrian national flag in the city of Qamishli

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Dozens of trucks carrying humanitarian aid set off on Thursday for the town of Rastan in Syria’s Homs province for a delivery to a besieged area where supplies have not been able to enter for months, the Red Crescent said.

Rastan was one of the first areas to be bombed by Russian warplanes when Moscow intervened in the five-year Syrian war in September. New government air strikes have targeted the area in recent days as a partial truce in western Syria has unraveled.

A spokesman for the Red Cross, which was to deliver the aid alongside the Red Crescent, said Thursday’s convoy included 65 trucks carrying food and medical aid. He said it was one of the largest joint humanitarian aid deliveries in Syria.

United Nations and Red Cross aid deliveries have reached a number of besieged areas in Syria this year, including during a U.S.-Russian-brokered cessation of hostilities agreement that took effect in February.

The truce is now in tatters after fighting intensified, and peace talks in Geneva appeared to collapse this week.

Fresh fighting has displaced tens of thousands more people in recent days near the northern city of Aleppo, the United Nations says. Many locations besieged by government forces and their allies, Islamic State fighters and other insurgents remain hard to reach, aid agencies say.

(Reporting by John Davison, editing by Larry King)