Tag Archives: United Nations

U.N. to restart Syria peace talks on March 9

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations will delay the next round of Syria peace talks by two days to allow the cessation of hostilities in force since Saturday to take hold, U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said.

International observers have acknowledged violations of the agreement intended to halt nearly five years of fighting while reporting that the level of violence has decreased considerably.

“We are delaying it to the afternoon of (March) 9th for logistical and technical reasons and also for the ceasefire to better settle down,” de Mistura told Reuters on Tuesday. The talks had been penciled in for March 7.

The cessation of hostilities was “a glimmer of hope”, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said, although he accused the opposition of violating the agreement.

The opposition in turn says the Syrian government has breached the fragile truce by repeatedly attacking its positions, which the government denies.

“We will play our part to make the whole thing work,” Assad told Germany’s ARD television network, adding that the Syrian army had not reacted to truce violations in order to give the agreement a chance.

“The terrorists have breached the deal from the first day. We as the Syrian army are refraining from responding in order to give a chance to sustain the agreement. But in the end there are limits and it all depends on the other side,” Assad said.

The cessation of hostilities agreement, drawn up by the United States and Russia, is seen by the U.N. as an opportunity to revive peace talks which collapsed before they had even started a month ago in Geneva.

It also hopes the truce will allow humanitarian aid to be sent into besieged areas where manySyrians are living in dire conditions.

However, the opposition said it had yet to be officially informed of a new round of talks on March 9, insisting that no serious discussions can begin before detainees are freed and blockades are lifted.

Riad Nassan Agha, a member of the High Negotiations Committee, told Reuters the opposition would study the call for talks based on developments on the ground, adding that it heard of the March 9 date only through the media.

NEGOTIATING TABLE

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said there was an urgent need to implement the agreement and for the warring parties to return to the negotiating table, a U.N. statement said.

“They agreed on the importance of urgently moving forward simultaneously on implementing the cessation of hostilities agreement, providing vital humanitarian assistance to civilians, and returning to political negotiations,” the statement said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday that while efforts were being made to track down alleged violations of the cessation of hostilities, there was currently no evidence to suggest they would destabilize the fragile peace.

In a telephone conversation on Tuesday, Lavrov and Kerry reaffirmed the importance of coordination, chiefly military, between Moscow and Washington to strengthen the truce, the Russian foreign ministry reported.

De Mistura expected to see attempts to disrupt the ceasefire, saying these needed to be contained to avoid them spreading and undermining the credibility of the truce.

“We don’t want discussions in Geneva to become a discussion about infringements or not of the ceasefire, we want them to actually address the core of everything,” he said in an interview.

De Mistura wants the Syrian sides to focus on constitutional reform, governance, and hopes elections can be held in 18 months. Prisoner releases would also be “very much up front on the agenda”, he said.

Syria‘s Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Hussam Aala, said his government was cooperating over aid deliveries, including to rebel-led areas. It was facilitating “access to humanitarian aid to those who need it without discrimination, between the besieged zones or zones infiltrated by terrorists”.

However, addressing the U.N. Human Rights Council, he also accused Saudi Arabia and Qatar of financing jihadist rebel groups including the Nusra Front, which is linked to al Qaeda, and also rejected criticism from France.

JIHADIST GROUPS

The agreement does not include Islamic State or the Nusra Front, and Assad and his Russian backers have made clear they intend to keep attacking them.

The Saudi-backed “moderate” opposition says that because some of their fighters are in areas alongside Nusra, they fear being targeted too.

The Russian Defence Ministry said it was refraining from striking areas where the “moderate opposition” was respecting the ceasefire agreement, Interfax news agency reported.

A total of 15 ceasefire violations have been registered in Syria in the past 24 hours, Interfax quoted the Russian military as saying. The U.S. State Department, however, said it had not received any reports of “significant” violations.

The Syrian military denied it was responsible for any violations and said “terrorist groups”, the term it uses to describe its enemies, were to blame. Operations against Islamic State – also known as Daesh – and the Nusra Front were going ahead.

“The combat operations that the Syrian Arab Army is carrying out against Daesh and Nusra are continuing according to the plans of the military command,” a Syrian military source said.

(Additional reporting by Lidia Kelly and Tom Perry; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Peter Millership, Pravin Char and David Stamp)

Europe on cusp of self-induced humanitarian crisis, UNHCR says

GENEVA/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The build-up of thousands of migrants and refugees on Greece’s northern borders is fast turning into a humanitarian disaster, the United Nations said on Tuesday as the European Union prepared to offer more financial aid.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said clashes at Greece’s border with Macedonia on Monday – when migrants battered down a gate and were tear-gassed – simply underlined the urgency with which the EU needed to act on the crisis.

But Austria – which last month limited the number of migrants it lets through to 3,200 a day – stuck to its position that it did not want to become an overcrowded waiting room for thousands wanting to make it further north.

Croatia, which is also on what is now the well-trodden migrants route northwards from Greece, said it might deploy its armed forces to help police control flows.

But near Idomeni, on the Greek-Macedonian border itself, a tent city mushroomed, prompting some despair among those trapped there. “Macedonian police put us here, the Greeks don’t want us back,” Yase Qued, a 16-year-old from Afghanistan, told Reuters.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) called for better planning and accommodation for at least 24,000 it said were stuck in Greece, including 8,500 at Idomeni.

“Europe is on the cusp of a largely self-induced humanitarian crisis,” U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards told a news briefing.

“The crowded conditions are leading to shortages of food, shelter, water and sanitation. As we all saw yesterday, tensions have been building, fuelling violence and playing into the hands of people smugglers,” he said.

Migrants have become stranded in Greece since Austria and other countries along the Balkans migration corridor imposed restrictions on their borders, limiting the numbers able to cross.

Police chiefs from Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia, meeting in Belgrade, agreed to improve the system of joint registration of refugees to unblock gridlocks in Greece.

The burgeoning crisis adds to last year’s chaos when more than a million migrants and refugees arrived in the EU, many fleeing the war in Syria and walking from Turkey northwards.

Some 130,000 have reached the continent so far in 2016.

CRISIS AID

The European Commission, the EU executive, said it would float a plan on Wednesday to offer emergency financial aid for humanitarian crises inside the 28-nation bloc – comparable with operations it has launched elsewhere in the world.

Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker spoke to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Monday and European Council President Donald Tusk was on a visit to Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Greece and Turkey.

Tusk’s tour comes ahead of a special European Union summit on the crisis next Monday. Germany’s Merkel said television pictures of migrants desperate to make their way into western Europe via the Balkans drove home the urgency of the summit.

“The pictures show us clearly every day that there is a need for talks,” she said after meeting Croatian Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic in Berlin.

“We also naturally need to deal with the very difficult situation in Greece and see how we can fulfill what the (European) Commission demanded from us, namely to end the politics of waving people through and to return to the Schengen system as soon as possible and to the greatest possible extent.”

The difficulty of reaching agreement on an issue which goes to the heart of public fears for security and safety in many countries was underlined by Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann, who honed in on comments from German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere that suggested he thought Austria might wave through too many migrants.

“What is not acceptable is to say that they should definitely come and then the interior minister says he is against waving people through (to Germany),” Faymann told a news conference after a weekly cabinet meeting.

“Then how should they go to Germany?”

The UNHCR, meanwhile, urged all EU member states to reinforce their capacity to register and process asylum seekers through their national procedures as well as through an EU relocation scheme.

“Greece cannot manage this situation alone,” Edwards said.

Despite commitments to relocate 66,400 refugees from Greece, EU member states have so far pledged just 1,539 spaces and only 325 people actually have been relocated, he added.

(Additional reporting by Lefteris Papadimas in Idomeni, Francois Murphy in Vienna, Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade, Paul Carrel in Berlin; Writing by Jeremy Gaunt; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

U.N. demands Syria parties halt fighting, peace talks set for March 7

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations Security Council on Friday unanimously demanded that all parties to the civil war in Syria comply with the terms of a U.S.-Russian deal on a “cessation of hostilities” due to take effect at midnight local time.

The demand was included in a resolution drafted jointly by Russia and the United States that also urged the government and opposition to resume U.N.-brokered peace talks.

Before the 15-nation council voted, U.N. Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura told its members via video link from Geneva that he intends to reconvene peace talks on March 7 provided the halt in fighting largely holds and allows for greater delivery of humanitarian relief.

The council demanded “that all parties to whom the cessation of hostilities applies … fulfill their commitments.”

It also urged “all Member States, especially ISSG (International Syria Support Group) members, to use their influence with the parties to the cessation of hostilities to ensure fulfillment of those commitments and to support efforts to create conditions for a durable and lasting ceasefire.”

De Mistura had abruptly aborted a first round of talks on Feb. 3 and urged countries in the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), led by the United States and Russia, to do more preparatory work.

“It is going to be extremely challenging, especially at the outset, to make this work,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power told the council. “Even a partial de-escalation would make a real difference in the lives of Syrians.”

She added that any violations of the cessation of hostilities must be met with a “sober, coordinated response.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Ministry Gennady Gatilov told the council that “we now have a real chance to end violence and to step up our collective combat against terrorism.” He added that it would also be an opportunity to boost humanitarian aid relief.

The council meeting was delayed by half an hour as the United States and Russia engaged in last-minute negotiations on the text, diplomats told Reuters.

Among the changes was the removal of two references to the Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee (HNC), a Syrian opposition coalition that Russia and Iran do not consider to be a legitimate representative in the peace talks.

French Ambassador Francois Delattre was cautious.

“Resumption of (peace) discussions will only be possible if the agreed-upon commitments are strictly implemented by the regime and foreign powers that support it,” he said,

He said he was disturbed by the “intensification of bombings by the Syrian army and Russia, a few hours only before the start of the (halt).”

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols and Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Andrew Hay)

Russia presses U.N. Security Council on Syria’s sovereignty

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Russia asked the United Nations Security Council on Friday to call for Syria’s sovereignty to be respected, for cross-border shellings and incursions to be halted and for “attempts or plans for foreign ground intervention” to be abandoned.

Russia circulated a short draft resolution to the 15-member council over concerns about an escalation in hostilities on the Turkey/Syria border and possible plans for a Turkish ground operation. The document does not name Turkey.

The Security Council was meeting on Friday afternoon to discuss the draft.

The draft, seen by Reuters, would have the council express “its grave alarm at the reports of military buildup and preparatory activities aimed at launching foreign ground intervention into the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic.”

On the way into the council meeting, veto powers U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, and French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre both said the Russian draft resolution has no future.

The draft also demands that states “refrain from provocative rhetoric and inflammatory statements inciting further violence and interference into internal affairs of the Syrian Arab Republic.”

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Reuters this week that his country, Saudi Arabia and some European powers wanted ground troops in Syria, though no serious plan had been debated.

Russia’s relations with Turkey hit a low in November when Turkish warplanes downed a Russian bomber near the Syrian-Turkish border, a move described by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “dastardly stab in the back.”

(Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Leslie Adler and Sandra Maler)

More children, migrants drowning while trying to cross Mediterranean

More than 340 children have died while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea in the past five and a half months, three agencies announced Friday, saying the death toll continues to climb.

The actual number of drownings could be higher, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the U.N. Refugee Agency said in a joint statement, because authorities may not have been able to recover every child’s body.

Still, the agencies said the current number of deaths equates to an average of two children per day since September 2015, as more migrant families try to reach Europe in search of better lives.

The U.N. Refugee Agency has said that more than 1 million migrants and refugees traveled to Europe by sea alone last year, most of them fleeing war-torn countries. More than 3,700 died.

In Friday’s announcement, the three agencies said migrants often travel in overloaded, poor-quality boats that place them at a higher risk of capsizing, particularly in rough seas.

“Clearly, more efforts are needed to combat smuggling and trafficking,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said in a statement.

The IOM says 90,756 adults and children have traveled across water to Italy and Greece during the first 49 days of 2016, and 411 of them have died. Some 7,461 have died since January 2014.

The agencies called for actions to ensure migrants travel safely, noting that many of them are currently trying to join relatives in Europe. They said some 36 percent of migrants are children.

“This is not only a Mediterranean problem, or even a European one,” IOM Director General William Lacy Swing said in a statement. “It is a humanitarian catastrophe in the making that demands the entire world’s engagement.”

South Sudan rivals talk peace while killing civilians, U.N. says

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – South Sudan’s warring government and opposition are killing, abducting, and displacing civilians and destroying property despite conciliatory rhetoric by both sides, the United Nations said on Friday.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is due to travel to South Sudan’s capital Juba next Thursday to meet with President Salva Kiir. A political dispute between Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar two years ago sparked a civil war and renewed hostilities between Kiir’s Dinka and Machar’s Nuer people. More than 10,000 people have been killed.

After months of ineffective negotiations and failed ceasefires, both sides agreed in January to share positions in a transitional government and earlier this month Kiir re-appointed Machar to his former post as vice president.

“It cannot be tolerated that leaders make declarations in Juba, while the hostilities and attacks on the civilian population continue and intensify across the country,” said U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic.

He told the U.N. Security Council that the conflict threatens stability in the entire region.

Simonovich said that in the Greater Upper Nile region of South Sudan government forces had systematically razed villages and that sexual violence and abuse of children’s rights were rampant.

“During an attack on Koch county, one woman described how soldiers killed her husband, then tied her to a tree and forced her to watch as her 15-year-old daughter was raped by at least 10 soldiers,” Simonovich said.

U.N. peacekeepers are sheltering nearly 200,000 people at six protection sites in South Sudan and more than 2.3 million people have been displaced.

Eighteen people were killed in fighting on Wednesday at one of those U.N. compounds and more than 90 were wounded, the U.N. Refugee Agency said. Two Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) workers were among the dead, the international medical aid group said.

“Violence continues in many regions of the country, including in areas that had previously been relatively calm,” Deputy U.N. envoy to South Sudan Moustapha Soumare told the council.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

U.N. aims to air drop food to ISIS-besieged city in eastern Syria

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations plans to make its first air drops of food aid in Syria, to Deir al-Zor, an eastern town of 200,000 besieged by Islamic State militants, the chair of a U.N. humanitarian task force said on Thursday.

U.N. aid agencies do not have direct access to areas held by Islamic State, including Deir al-Zor, where civilians face severe food shortages and sharply deteriorating conditions.

Jan Egeland, speaking to reporters in Geneva a day after U.N. aid convoys reached five areas, some besieged by government forces and others by rebels, said the U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP) had a “concrete plan” for carrying out the Deir al-Zor operation in coming days.

He said the WFP hoped to make progress reaching “the poor people inside Deir al-Zor, which is besieged by Islamic State. That can only be done by air drops,” said Egeland.

“It’s a complicated operation and would be in many ways the first of its kind,” Egeland said, giving no details of the air operation, which is far more costly than land convoys.

Egeland, who is head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, later told Reuters in Oslo: “It is either airdrops or nothing. Airdrops are a desperate measure in desperate times.”

A WFP official was not available to comment on where cargo planes would depart from or what they would carry.

Deir al-Zor is the main town in a province of the same name. The province links Islamic State’s de facto capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa with territory controlled by the militant group in neighboring Iraq.

Egeland chaired a three-hour meeting of the humanitarian task force on Syria, where he said that many member states pledged support for the attempt to reach Deir al-Zor.

Russia is Syria’s main ally in the five-year war, while Western and Arab states support rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad.

The U.N. estimates there are 486,700 people in around 15 besieged areas of Syria, and 4.6 million in hard-to-reach areas. In some, starvation deaths and severe malnutrition have been reported.

“We hope to be able to reach the remaining areas in the next days,” Egeland said, adding the group would meet again in a week.

Britain’s foreign minister Philip Hammond said in a statement: “Starvation of civilians as a method of combat is unacceptable. The international community and particularly Russia, which has unique influence, must put pressure on the Assad regime to lift sieges and grant full humanitarian access.”

In the past 24 hours, 114 U.N. trucks delivered life-saving food and medical supplies to 80,000 people in five besieged areas, enough for one month, Egeland said.

These were Madaya, Zabadani and Mouadamiya al-Sham near Damascus, which are under siege by government forces, and the villages of al-Foua and Kefraya in Idlib province, surrounded by rebel fighters.

It marked the “beginning of the task” assigned by ministers from major and regional powers who met a week ago in Munich.

But some “vital medical items” were not delivered, he said.

A spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO) said that government forces had removed some medicines for emergency and trauma care from supplies bound for Mouadamiya, but had allowed a hemodialysis machine for diabetics, medicines and nutritional supplements.

(Reporting and writing by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; additional reporting by Gwladys Fouche; Editing by Dominic Evans and Katharine Houreld)

U.N. envoy wins Syria government green light for aid convoys

GENEVA (Reuters) – The Syrian government has approved access to seven besieged areas and U.N. convoys are expected to set off in days, the United Nations said on Tuesday after crisis talks in Damascus.

U.N. Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura, who won the green light at talks with Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem, said the world body would test the government commitment to allow access on Wednesday but gave no details.

Their meeting in Damascus came at a time when government forces have been advancing rapidly with the aid of Russian air strikes, and just days before an internationally agreed pause in fighting is due to take effect.

De Mistura said they had discussed the issue of humanitarian access to areas besieged by all sides in the five-year war.

“It is clear it is the duty of the government of Syria to want to reach every Syrian person wherever they are and allow the U.N. to bring humanitarian aid,” de Mistura said in a statement. “Tomorrow we test this.”

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that Syria had approved access to Deir al-Zor; Foua and Kafraya in Idlib; and Madaya, Zabadani, Kafr Batna and Mouadamiya al-Sham in rural Damascus.

“Humanitarian agencies and partners are preparing convoys for these areas, to depart as soon as possible in the coming days,” the OCHA said. It was not immediately clear whether the convoys would begin on Wednesday, as de Mistura had indicated.

Nor was there any indication of a breakthrough on access to areas besieged by armed opposition groups.

U.N.-backed peace talks are scheduled to resume in Geneva on Feb. 25, after de Mistura suspended a first round earlier this month.

Last Friday global powers meeting in Munich agreed to the pause in fighting in the hope that this could allow the talks to resume, but the deal does not take effect until the end of this week and was not signed by the Syrian warring parties.

“We are witnessing a degradation on the ground that cannot wait,” U.N. spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told a news briefing. “The reason (de Mistura) suspended (the talks) was, as you know, that cities were still being bombed, people were still being starved on the ground.”

SUPPLY ROUTES

The Syrian government is meanwhile advancing in the north of the country with Russian air support. Damascus says its main objectives are to recapture Aleppo – Syria’s biggest city before the war – and seal the Turkish border, lifeline of rebel-held territory for years.

Those would be the biggest victories for Damascus of the war so far, and would all but end rebel hopes of overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad, the goal they have pursued since 2011 with the support of the West, Arab states and Turkey.

Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Hussam Aala, said in an interview in the daily Tribune de Geneve: “We have done all we could to facilitate the passage of aid convoys in January and February.”

“The advance of the Syrian army in this region has allowed us to break the siege imposed against two towns, Nubul and al-Zahra. It opened the way for the Syrian Arab Red Crescent to deliver aid to 70,000 residents. Our objective was to cut all the supply routes for arms and for men to the terrorist groups armed by Turkey.”

The United Nations has reported that hospitals have been struck in northern Syria in areas where Russian and Syrian warplanes are launching air strikes as part of their advance.

U.N. rights spokesman Rupert Colville condemned the air strikes on hospitals and schools in Idlib and Aleppo provinces.

“If it’s deliberate, intentional targeting, then it may amount a war crime. But at this point, we’re not in a position to make that judgment. Ultimately that’s only a court that can make that judgment, and you need sufficient evidence,” he said.

“Clearly those two, both Russian and Syrian planes, are very active in this area. So obviously they should know who is responsible.”

Russian news agencies quoted a Russian Defence Ministry spokesman as saying on Tuesday that Russia’s Caspian Sea flotilla did not have a boat capable of firing a ballistic missile on the hospital in Idlib province.

International humanitarian law says hospitals and health care personnel must be protected, Colville said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Kevin Liffey, Katharine Houreld and Peter Graff)

Russia, pressed to end Syria bombing, proposes March truce

UNITED NATIONS/DAMASCUS/ONCUPINAR, Turkey (Reuters) – World powers pressed Russia on Wednesday to stop bombing around Aleppo in support of a Syrian government offensive to recapture the city and a Western official said Moscow had presented a proposal envisaging a truce in three weeks’ time.

Secretary of State John Kerry is pushing for a ceasefire and more aid access to Aleppo, where rebel-held areas are being cut off and the United Nations has warned a new humanitarian disaster could be on the way.

Aid workers said on Wednesday the water supply to Aleppo, still home to two million people, was no longer functioning.

Kerry is hoping for agreement at a meeting in Munich on Thursday between Russia, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other powers, aimed at trying to revive peace negotiations that foundered earlier this month.

Syrian officials have indicated no plans to ease up the war effort. A Syrian military source said on Wednesday the battle for Aleppo, a major prize in a war which has killed a quarter of a million people, would continue in “all directions”.

Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said the government expected a tough but relatively short battle to return the city to state control. “I do not expect the battle of Aleppo to go on long,” he told Reuters in Damascus.

A Western official said Russia had made a proposal to begin a ceasefire in Syria on March 1, but that Washington has concerns about parts of it and no agreement had been reached.

In Washington, a state department envoy told Congress the United States needs to consider options in case the diplomatic push does not succeed.

Asked how soon a ceasefire could be put in place, a Russian diplomat who declined to be identified said: “Maybe March, I think so.”

At a closed-door meeting of the 15-member U.N. Security Council on Wednesday, several members pressed Russia to end the Aleppo bombing sooner.

“The (Syrian) regime and its allies cannot pretend they are extending a hand to the opposition while with their other hand they are trying to destroy them,” French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters.

“CROSSED THE LINE”

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Russian air strikes were being undertaken in a “transparent manner” and some Security Council members had “crossed the line” by politically exploiting humanitarian issues.

“They rather crudely use humanitarian matters in order to play, we believe, a destructive role as far as the political process is concerned,” said Churkin, adding that given the heightened interest in humanitarian issues, the council should also start regularly discussing Yemen and Libya.

One U.N. diplomatic source said Russia was “stringing Kerry along” in order to provide diplomatic cover for Moscow’s real goal – to help President Bashar al-Assad win on the battlefield instead of compromising at the negotiating table.

“It’s clear to everyone now that Russia really doesn’t want a negotiated solution but for Assad to win,” said the diplomatic source, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Kremlin rejects claims that it has abandoned diplomacy in pursuit of a military solution, saying it would continue to providing military aid to Assad to fight “terrorist groups” and accusing Syria’s opposition of walking away from the talks.

FOOD, WATER SHORTAGES

Doctors working on both sides of the Syria-Turkey border say they have been overwhelmed by injuries caused by the air strikes, which Moscow says have only targeted Islamist militants but which Western countries say have caused widespread civilian casualties.

“We are increasingly seeing what we call multiple-trauma injuries because of the bombs and the heavy weapons they are using. There are large burn cases, lots of amputations, and internal traumas,” Mahmoud Mustafa, director of the Independent Doctors Association, told Reuters in Gaziantep, Turkey.

French charity Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF), which runs six hospitals in Syria and provides support for another 153 health facilities across the country, said medical workers in the area north of Aleppo had been forced to flee for their lives.

“Yet again we are seeing healthcare under siege,” said Muskilda Zancada, MSF head of mission, Syria.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was delivering water to Aleppo because the city’s system was no longer working but that some supply routes for aid had been cut.

“The temperatures are extremely low and, without an adequate supply of food, water and shelter, displaced people are trying to survive in very precarious conditions,” the head of the ICRC in Syria, Marianne Gasser, said in a statement from Aleppo.

The latest fighting around Aleppo has killed about 500 people on all sides, a monitoring group said.

Medecins Sans Frontiers spokesman Sam Taylor said that while its own hospitals in Syria had not been hit, many others had.

“From the reports we get from MSF-supported facilities, the majority of hospitals are damaged or destroyed by aerial attacks,” he said. “In last two to three weeks we have definitely seen a trend of facilities being hit in the south and in the north.”

FABIUS QUESTIONS U.S. COMMITMENT

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman plans to visit Moscow in mid-March, Russia’s RIA news agency said, a meeting that would bring together the main sponsors of the opposing sides.

Saudi-backed rebels said they would go to Thursday’s meeting in Munich but would only go to U.N. peace talks in Geneva later this month if Russia stopped bombarding their positions and humanitarian aid reached civilians in the areas they control.

Opposition coordinator Riad Hijab said the Russian and Iranian intervention in Syria was bolstering the extremist threat in the Middle East, but the rebels would not give up.

On the ground, rebels say they are fighting for survival.

A commander of a Turkmen contingent within the Levant Front rebel group, Zekeria Karsli, said his men faced attacks on three fronts: Islamic State to the east, Syrian government forces to the south and Kurds to the west.

“Unfortunately the military situation on the battlefield is pretty bad. Russian planes are hitting us from the air and the Iranian/Assad block is hitting us from the ground,” he told Reuters near the Oncupinar border post.

He said Russian warplanes were carrying out hundreds of sorties every day and that the north of Aleppo city was encircled. But he said routes in to rebel-held parts of the city from Idlib province to the west were still open.

Opposition spokesman Salim al-Muslat said U.S. President Barack Obama could stop the Russian attacks. “If he is willing to save our children it is really the time now to say ‘no’ to these strikes in Syria.”

The rebels want anti-aircraft weapons so they can bring down the Russian planes that have been bombing intensely over the past four months.

But their Western and Arab backers have refused, fearing Islamic State militants could seize and use them against their own planes conducting air strikes against the jihadists, who have exploited the war to seize large parts of Syria and Iraq.

United Nations Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura has set a target date of Feb. 25 to reconvene talks between the Syrian government and opposition in Geneva.

But the offensive by Syrian forces, Hezbollah and Shiite militias directed by Iran – all backed by Russian bombing raids – have reversed opposition gains on the ground and encircled rebels inside Aleppo, a strategic prize now divided between government and opposition control.

“It’ll be easy to get a ceasefire soon because the opposition will all be dead,” a Western diplomat told Reuters. “That’s a very effective ceasefire.”

(Additional reporting by Warren Strobel in Munich, John Irish in Paris, Louis Charbonneau in New York, Parisa Hafezi in Ankara, Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Jonathan Landay in Washington and Michelle Nichols in New York; writing by Philippa Fletcher; editing by Dominic Evans)

In Yemen war, hospitals bombed to rubble, starvation spreads

DUBAI (Reuters) – Elderly Hamama Yousif was rushed to the main hospital in one of Yemen’s largest cities after an artillery round lashed her chest with shrapnel, only to find that the doctors there had run out of the oxygen tanks needed to save her life.

In a video captured by local news station Yemen Youth TV, worried relatives carry her, still talking, to almost every clinic and hospital in the war-torn city of Taiz – none had any oxygen – until motionless and dead, she was finally taken to the morgue.

Once known as “Arabia Felix” or happy Arabia, Yemen has been disfigured by 10 months of war into one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, where over half the population faces hunger and not even hospitals are spared.

The wounded and the dying find little comfort in al-Thawra hospital in the southwestern city of Taiz: Pressure from nearby shelling has blown out all the windows and several direct hits have reduced one ward nearly to dust.

“Our situation is disastrous in every possible way,” said Sadeq Shujaa, head of the local doctor’s union.

“Shelling hit the only cancer hospital and the children’s hospital, shutting them down. The war has sent doctors fleeing for their lives to the countryside and siege tactics mean we have to smuggle in medicine through mountain passes.”

Taiz is contested between local militias and the armed Houthi group which many residents say blocks aid from entering and bombs civilian targets. It is one of the worst fronts of the war, in which forces loyal to a government ousted by the Houthis in March are seeking to fight back to the capital Sanaa.

After the government fled into exile, a Saudi-led alliance of Arab states joined the war to restore it, recapturing the port city of Aden where President Abd Rabbu Mansour al-Hadi is now based.

Riyadh and its allies have launched hundreds of air strikes, sent in ground troops and set up a naval blockade to restrict goods reaching the country. The Saudis say the Houthis, drawn mainly from a Shi’ite sect that ruled a thousand-year kingdom in north Yemen until 1962, are puppets of Shi’ite Iran.

The Houthis have allied themselves with army units loyal to long-serving former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and say they are leading a revolution against a corrupt government in thrall to the foreign invaders. They deny receiving support from Iran.

STAGGERING CRISIS

The fighting has killed around 6,000 people, about half of them civilians. Many times more are now in danger as a result of the humanitarian catastrophe wrought by the conflict.

The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) warns of a “staggering” food crisis, saying famine looms as over half the population or some 14.4 million people are food insecure.

“The economy shrank by 35 percent in 2015. People who used to have decent standards of living have become Yemen’s ‘new poor’ because with no electricity to power their business and no fuel to get anywhere, they have no way to earn money,” said Mohammed al-Assadi of UNICEF.

“2.4 million people are internally displaced. In these conditions there’s no easy access to basic hygiene or healthcare, and now about 320,000 children under five years old are severely malnourished,” he added.

On the outskirts of Sanaa and in towns outside Taiz, clusters of shabby tent encampments housing thousands of families fleeing nearby violence have cropped up, where jobless parents idle and many children shrivel with hunger.

In peacetime, impoverished Yemen imported 90 percent of its staple foods. Much of the 4 percent of the arid country that is arable land now lies untilled because of the war.

“Besides the humanitarian catastrophes, a lack of jobs paves the way for a social and political crisis in which work skills erode and some people join the war effort to earn a living, feeding a cycle of violence,” said Salah Elhajj Hassan of FAO.

HIDING IN CAVES

Workers from the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), among the few foreign aid groups operating in Yemen’s worst war zones, have suffered repeated attacks in the far northern province of Saada straddling the Saudi border.

An ambulance from an MSF-affiliated hospital rushed to the scene of a suspected Saudi-led air strike on Jan. 21, but just as crowds gathered to assist the victims another bomb fell and killed a medic.

An MSF hospital was bombed on Oct. 27 in what the Saudi-led coalition says was a strike intended to target militiamen nearby.

Brigadier General Ahmed al-Asseri, spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, said the foreign forces were working to reduce civilian deaths, but aid groups like MSF should prevent Houthi fighters from approaching their facilities.

As Yemeni society becomes increasingly militarized, combatants are often mixed among civilians. Rights group Human Rights Watch blamed Houthis for basing forces in a center for the blind in the capital that was bombed on Jan. 5.

The bomb did not explode, but rendered the facility unusable.

Days after the blast, a young boy with grey sightless eyes felt his way through the rubble and picked up a dead pigeon, in a moment captured by a local cameraman that has embodied for many Yemenis the sadness of the war.

Fear now reigns even where aid is available. MSF official Teresa Sancristoval said in a statement that most of the 40,000 residents in an area near an MSF hospital bombed on Jan. 10 now live in caves to avoid Saudi-led air strikes.

“Since the attack, there have been no deliveries in the maternity room – pregnant women are giving birth in caves rather than risk coming to the hospital,” she said.

(Editing by William Maclean and Peter Graff)