Tag Archives: U.N

Air strikes on Aleppo hospital kill 27, U.N. declares catastrophe

A civil defence member carries a child that survived from under the rubble at a site hit by airstrikes in the

By Lisa Barrington and Stephanie Nebehay

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – Air strikes destroyed a hospital and killed dozens of people in rebel-held areas of Syria’s Aleppo including children and doctors, and the United Nations called on Moscow and Washington to salvage a “barely-alive” cease-fire.

The city of Aleppo is at the epicenter of a military escalation that has undermined peace talks in Geneva to end the five-year-old war and U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura appealed to the presidents of the United States and Russia to intervene.

Six days of air strikes and rebel shelling in Aleppo, which is split between government forces and rebels, have killed some 200 people in the city, two-thirds of them on the opposition side, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says.

“The catastrophic deterioration in Aleppo over the last 24-48 hours” has jeopardized the aid lifeline that delivers supplies to millions of Syrians, said Jan Egeland, chairman of the U.N. humanitarian task force. “I could not in any way express how high the stakes are for the next hours and days.”

The Geneva talks aim to end a war that has killed more than 250,000 people, created the world’s worst refugee crisis, allowed for the rise of Islamic State and drawn in regional and major powers but the negotiations have all but failed and a truce to allow them to take place has collapsed.

Winding up the Geneva talks, de Mistura said he aimed to resume them in May, but gave no date.

“Wherever you are, you hear explosions of mortars, shelling and planes flying over,” Valter Gros, who heads the International Committee of the Red Cross Aleppo office, said.

“There is no neighborhood of the city that hasn’t been hit. People are living on the edge. Everyone here fears for their lives and nobody knows what is coming next,” he said.

A Syrian military source said government planes had not been in areas where air raids were reported. Syria’s army denied reports that the Syrian air force targeted the hospital.

The Russian defense ministry, whose air strikes have swung the war in favor of President Bashar al-Assad, could not immediately be reached for comment. Russia has previously denied hitting civilian targets in Syria where it launched air raids late last year to bolster its ally.

The British-based Observatory said 31 people were killed as a result of air strikes on several areas of opposition-held Aleppo on Thursday. In addition, it said at least 27 people were killed in the air strike on the hospital that was struck late on Wednesday. Rescue workers put the toll higher.

In government-held areas, rebel mortar shelling killed at least 14 people, the Observatory and Syria’s state news agency SANA reported.

“WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?”

The bombed al-Quds hospital was supported by international medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which said it was destroyed after being hit by a direct air strike that killed at least three doctors.

“This devastating attack has destroyed a vital hospital in Aleppo, and the main referral center for pediatric care in the area,” said Muskilda Zancada, MSF head of mission, Syria. “Where is the outrage among those with the power and obligation to stop this carnage?”

ICRC spokesman Ewan Watson told Reuters in Geneva: “It is unacceptable, any attack on hospitals is a war crime. But it is up to an investigator and it is for a court to take that decision on whether it is a war crime or not.”

Peace talks, which have been deeply divided on the future of Assad, looked to be over last week when the opposition walked out, saying the Syrian government was stalling for time to advance on the ground and calling for implementation of a U.N. resolution requiring full humanitarian access to besieged areas.

De Mistura voiced deep concern at the truce unraveling in Aleppo and at least three other places, but also said he saw some narrowing of positions between the government and opposition visions of political transition.

“Hence my appeal for a U.S.-Russian urgent initiative at the highest level, because the legacy of both President Obama and President Putin is linked to the success of what has been a unique initiative,” de Mistura told a news conference.

They should “be able to revitalize what they have created and which is still alive but barely”.

The United States and Russia must convene a ministerial meeting of major and regional powers who compose the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), he said.

Egeland said: “So the appeal of Staffan de Mistura to the United States, to Russia and to the other powers in the ISSG is ‘you did it once, you can do it again.'”

FUTURE OF ASSAD CRITICAL

Bashar Ja’afari, who led the government delegation, said on Tuesday the round had been “useful and constructive”. But he gave no sign of ceding to the opposition HNC’s central demand for a political transition without Assad. The government has said the future of Assad is non-negotiable.

De Mistura, asked whether Assad’s fate was discussed, replied: “We didn’t get into names of people … but actually how to change the current governance.”

The U.N. envoy said the two sides remained far apart in their vision of a political transition, but shared some “commonalities”, including the view “that the transitional governance could include members of the present government and the opposition, independents and others”.

Giving a chilling statistic about the backdrop of violence against which the talks played out, de Mistura said that in the past 48 hours there had been an average of one Syrian civilian killed every 25 minutes and one wounded every 13 minutes.

Hossam Abu Ghayth, 29, a documentary film-maker living in the rebel-held area of Kalasa in Aleppo which was bombed on Thursday, said by WhatsApp: “There are still planes (flying) … They’re hitting everything, mosques, markets, residential buildings, field hospitals.

“Dozens of people are under the rubble and the Civil Defence cannot dig out the bodies because of the intensity” of the bombardments.

Tony Ishak, 26, a resident of the government-held area of Suleimaniya in Aleppo and a politics student, said via WhatsApp:

“It’s been really bad for around four days now, the situation is worse than bad. Shells are falling like rain everywhere. The hospitals are full.”

(Writing by Peter Millership. Reporting by Lisa Barrington, Tom Perry, Suleiman al-Khalidi, John Davison, Stephanie Nebehay and Shadia Nasralla)

Russia supplying S-300 defense missiles to Iran ahead of schedule

Russian military vehicles move along a central street during a rehearsal for a military parade in Moscow

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia is supplying its S-300 air defense missile systems to Iran ahead of schedule and is now in talks with the Islamic Republic on deliveries of other military equipment, the head of Russia’s federal arms exports service, FSVTS, said on Tuesday.

“The talk is about only permitted items which are not on the U.N. list of banned (weapons),” Alexander Fomin told reporters. He did not elaborate.

(Reporting by Denis Dyomkin; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Dominic Evans)

U.N ‘extremely troubled’ by North Korea’s missile test.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un guides on the spot the underwater test-fire of strategic submarine ballistic missile

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – North Korea’s submarine-launched ballistic missile test is “extremely troubling” and the United Nations urges Pyongyang to “cease any further provocative action,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Monday.

North Korea said the missile test it conducted on Saturday was a “great success” that provided “one more means for powerful nuclear attack.”

The U.N. Security Council on Sunday condemned the test and expressed serious concern that such activities contributed to North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons delivery systems.

The submarine-launched ballistic missile test was the latest in a string of recent demonstrations of military might that began in January with North Korea’s fourth nuclear test and included the launch of a long-range rocket in February.

The tests have increased tension on the Korean peninsula and angered North Korea’s ally China. In March, the 15-member Security Council imposed harsh new sanctions on North Korea to starve it of money for its nuclear weapons program.

Dujarric told reporters the missile test was “extremely troubling as it constitutes another violation of relevant Security Council resolutions.”

“We would urge the DPRK (North Korea) to cease any further provocative action,” he said.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.N. says food situation in Iraq’s Falluja extremely worrying

A displaced Iraqi child, who fled from Islamic State violence from Saqlawiyah, near Falluja, is seen in the town of Khalidiya, north of Baghdad

GENEVA (Reuters) – The food situation for 60,000 civilians trapped in the besieged Iraqi city of Falluja is extremely worrying and likely to deteriorate unless aid gets into the city, the U.N. World Food Programme said on Monday.

The Iraqi army, police and Iranian-backed Shi’ite Muslim militias – backed by air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition – have maintained a near total siege on the Islamic State-held city, which is located 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, since late last year

“As the siege continued in Falluja for the third consecutive month, no sign of improvement was recorded in March; food prices remain extremely high, and stocks in shops and households are depleting. In March, the price of wheat was six times more expensive than in December,” the report said.

“For the third consecutive month, respondents from Hay Alwahda sub-district reported that shops and markets had exhausted all food supplies including wheat, sugar, rice, vegetable oil and lentils,” the report said.

The report was based on a mobile phone survey conducted in March. But it said reaching respondents had become increasingly difficult and very limited information was available, especially as armed opposition groups had shut down transmitter towers to stop people using mobile phones.

“Aid has not reached Falluja since the government recaptured nearby Ramadi in December 2015, with supply routes cut off by Iraqi forces and the armed groups preventing civilians from leaving,” the report said.

There were reports that people wanting to leave the city and seek safety were unable to do so, it said.

Last week a report from New York-based Human Rights Watch said desperate residents were making soup from grass and using ground date seeds to make flour for bread.

(Reporting by Tom Miles, editing by Richard Balmforth)