Tag Archives: War

Russia says will treat as terrorists rebels who refuse to leave Aleppo

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday he was confident Moscow and Washington can reach a deal in talks this week on the withdrawal of all rebels from the eastern part of the Syrian city of Aleppo.

He told a news conference once the deal was reached, rebels who stay in the besieged eastern part of the city will be treated as terrorists and Russia will support the operation of the Syrian army against them.

“Those armed groups who refuse to leave eastern Aleppo will be considered to be terrorists,” Lavrov said. “We will treat them as such, as terrorists, as extremists and will support a Syrian army operation against those criminal squads.”

Russia and the United States will start talks on the withdrawal in Geneva on Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has sent his proposals on routes and timing of the withdrawal, Lavrov said.

“We believe that when the Americans proposed their initiative for militants to leave eastern Aleppo, they realized what steps they and their allies, who have an influence on militants stuck in eastern Aleppo, would have to take.”

He added that a United Nations resolution on a ceasefire would be counterproductive because a ceasefire would allow rebels to regroup.

(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova,; writing by Maria Tsvetkova; Editing by Christian Lowe)

Air strikes kill 73 in rebel-held Idlib province: war monitor

excavator removing rubble after air strikes

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Air strikes killed at least 73 people in rebel-held Idlib province, including 38 in the city of Maarat al-Numan, on Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group monitoring the war, reported.

Russian war planes and Syrian military jets and helicopters have been conducting heavy strikes for months against rebels in Idlib, southwest of Aleppo. Insurgents had previously tried to get help and supplies to fellow rebels in the city from Idlib.

The Observatory said the death toll in Maarat al-Numan included five children and six members of a single family.

The bombardment included barrel bombs, improvised ordnance made from oil drums filled with explosives and dropped from helicopters, the monitor said. The Syrian military and Russia both deny using barrel bombs, whose use has been criticized by the United Nations.

Syria’s civil war, which began in 2011, pits President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia, Iran and Shi’ite Muslim militias against mostly Sunni rebels including groups supported by the United States, Turkey and Gulf kingdoms.

Jihadist militants are also fighting alongside the insurgents, including Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, which has a large presence in Idlib province and was known as the Nusra Front until July when it broke its formal allegiance to al Qaeda.

Russia says its air campaign, which began in September 2015, is aimed at preventing jihadists, including both Fateh al-Sham and the Islamic State group, from gaining more territory in Syria that could be used to mount attacks overseas.

(Reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Sunni tribesmen battling Islamic State demand federalism in Iraq

Members of the Lions of the Tigris, a group of Sunni Arab fighters and part of the Hashid Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Comimittee) take part during a military operation against Islamic State militants in Shayyalah al-Imam, Iraq

SHAYYALAH AL-IMAM, Iraq (Reuters) – As mortar bombs landed ever closer, Sunni tribal fighters preparing to attack Islamic State seemed more preoccupied by the failures of Iraq’s political class than the militants trying to kill them.

The men – and one woman – from the Lions of the Tigris unit gathered on Wednesday in Shayyalah al-Imam, a village near Mosul, with some of their leaders expressing deep distrust of the politicians and saying Iraq’s governance must change once Islamic State is defeated.

“Iraq needs serious reforms,” said Sheikh Mohammed al-Jibouri, the top commander of the tribesmen. “Only serious reforms will lead to the unity of Iraq.”

The unit is part of the Popular Mobilisation Committee, or Hashid Shaabi, which was formed to take on Islamic State after the hardline Sunni group swept through northern Iraq in 2014, facing little resistance from the army.

Hashid Shaabi is mostly comprised of Shi’ites but there are also Sunnis, such as the 655-strong Lions of the Tigris unit.

Their efforts along with government soldiers to capture several villages are part of an offensive to oust Islamic State from its stronghold of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city.

On the surface, their participation lends credibility to the Shi’ite-led government in Baghdad, accused by Sunnis of marginalising their minority community. It denies the accusation.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has been struggling to persuade Sunni tribesmen who helped U.S. forces defeat Al Qaeda during the 2003-11 occupation to join the battle against Islamic State. He has declared a war on corruption in government and army but faces resistance.

The show of force in Shayyalah al-Imam points to progress, with soldiers and tribesmen standing side-by-side.

But some of the men doubted the politicians have the resolve or desire to unify Iraq, gripped by sectarian bloodshed since the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein.

Another tribal commander, Abdel Rahman Ali, even saw Islamic State as part of an elaborate plot to weaken Sunnis, underlining the pervasive mistrust in Iraq.

“Everyone knows Islamic State will be defeated. The conspiracy was designed to hurt Iraq, especially Sunnis, after we liberate Mosul,” he told Reuters. “Our own politicians are behind it.”

UNITY OR PARTITION

Officials have said the Mosul offensive, the biggest ground operation since 2003, could make or break Iraq. If it inflames sectarian tensions in the predominantly Sunni city, the fighting could lead to Iraq’s partition, they warn.

But if the campaign goes smoothly and a new administration in Mosul is seen as non-sectarian, that could help the country to unite.

Ali said federalism modelled on the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq is the best option, even though that has created friction with Baghdad over oil resources.

Like many Sunnis, the minority who dominated under Saddam and then watched the majority Shi’ites rise to power, he is disillusioned with a governing system that allocates posts according to sects. Sunnis themselves are divided and lack a strong leadership, adding to Iraq’s fragmentation.

As the men spoke, Islamic State militants fired more mortar bombs towards their unit. One day earlier, suicide bombers attacked the area, a collection of bland cement houses choked by dust, overlooking the desert.

A few hundred metres away, soldiers stood on a rooftop, focused on two suspected car bombs in the distance.

Nashwan Sahn, a Sunni tribesmen who has been fighting Islamist militants in Iraq for 11 years, taking on al Qaeda and then Islamic State, kept warm at a small campfire where freshly-slaughtered chickens had been barbecued. A few raw livers lay scattered on a tray. Beside him was a Shi’ite soldier.

Both said they support Iraqi unity but neither had any faith in the politicians to manage the sectarian tensions which provoked a civil war in 2006-2007.

“Federalism would be good but only if we have good leaders,” said Sahn, who criticised all politicians including fellow Sunnis. “We liberate these villages where Sunnis live. Yet Sunni politicians who have constituents here have never visited us at the frontline.”

Miaad Madaad, the only female member of the Lions of the Tigris, clutched an AK-47 assault rifle and vowed to defeat Islamic State. “The last time they came to my house and threatened me I threw rocks at them and called them dogs,” she said proudly.

Islamic State militants beheaded her father-in-law and brother-in-law. But her story illustrates the sectarian and ethnic complexities and mistrust facing Iraq.

When she and her husband fled to the relatively stable Kurdish region earlier this year, he was arrested by Kurdish fighters who suspected him of being an Islamic State fighter.

(editing by David Stamp)

Iraqi forces say 1,000 Islamic State fighters killed in Mosul

Men sit on the ground as an Iraqi Special forces intelligence team check their ID cards as they search for Islamic State fighters in Mosul, Iraq

By Patrick Markey and Ulf Laessing

BARTELLA, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi special forces battling to clear Islamic State from eastern Mosul have killed nearly 1,000 militants but fighting has slowed as troops face a mobile enemy hidden among thousands of civilians in the city, a top commander said.

Six weeks into a major offensive, Iraqi forces have captured nearly half of eastern Mosul, moving from district to district against jihadist snipers, suicide attackers and car bombs.

Elite Iraqi troops, known as the “Golden Division”, are the only brigades to have entered Mosul from the east, with Iraqi army, federal police and Kurdish Peshmerga units surrounding the city to the north and south. Shi’ite militias are trying to complete the encirclement from the west.

The U.S.-trained Counter Terrorism Service unit breached Islamic State’s defenses at the end of October, but has been slowed by the militants’ mobile tactics and concern over civilian casualties preventing the use of tanks and heavy armor.

Major General Abdul Ghani al-Asadi, one of the commanders of the special forces, said troops had adapted their tactics, surrounding one district at a time to cut off the militants’ supplies and protect civilians.

“Progress was faster at the start. The reason is we were operating before in areas without residents,” Asadi told Reuters in Bartella, on Mosul’s outskirts.

“We have arrived in populated districts. So how do we protect civilians? We have sealed off district after district.”

He said around 990 militants had been killed in fighting in the east so far. He would not say how many casualties there were among government special forces.

“We have made changes to plans, partly due to the changing nature of the enemy … Daesh (Islamic State) is not based in one location, but moving from here to there,” he said.

“Tanks don’t work here, artillery is not effective. Planes from the coalition force and the air force are restricted because of the civilians.”

THOUSANDS DISPLACED

The Iraqi government has asked civilians in Mosul to stay at home during the offensive, as humanitarian organizations say they cannot cope with an influx of hundred of thousands of people displaced from the city.

More than one million people are believed to remain in the city, the largest in northern Iraq.

Defeating Islamic State in Mosul, Islamic State’s last major bastion in Iraq, is seen as vital to destroying the “caliphate” declared by the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, from the pulpit of Mosul’s Grand Mosque in July 2014.

But commanders have said the battle could take months. Dozens of districts must be taken in the east before attacking forces reach the Tigris River which splits Mosul into east and west. U.S. air strikes have taken out four of the five river bridges used by the militants.

Major General Najm al-Jubbouri, one of the army’s top commanders, told Reuters that the western part of the city could be the more dangerous.

To the south, Iraqi army brigades are now advancing slowly on the remaining Islamic State-held villages before reaching the city limits. To the west, the mostly Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias known as Popular Mobilisation have cut off the highway to Syria, but they have yet to close in on the city.

“The force left in front of us is small, unable to stop our advance. Their spirit is broken,” Asadi said.

“We have killed more than 992 fighters on our front plus more wounded … Their supplies and communications to the outside world are cut. They stage fewer suicide bombings.”

Iraqi military estimates initially put the number of insurgents in Mosul at 5,000 to 6,000, facing a 100,000-strong coalition force. But Asadi said the figure for the Islamic State presence may have been too high.

Iraqi authorities have not released estimates of civilian casualties but the United Nations says growing numbers of injured, both civilians and military, are overwhelming aid groups.

(Reporting by Patrick Markey; editing by Giles Elgood)

Civilians flee as Shi’ite groups close in on flashpoint town west of Mosul

Displace Iraqi family

By Isabel Coles and Saif Hameed

ERBIL/BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have fled Tal Afar as Shi’ite paramilitary groups close in the Islamic State-held town on the road between Mosul and Raqqa, the main cities of the militant group’s self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

The exodus from Tal Afar, 60 km (40 miles) west of Mosul, is causing concern among humanitarian organizations as some of the fleeing civilians are heading deeper into insurgents’ territory, where aid cannot be sent to them, provincial officials said.

Popular Mobilisation units, a coalition of mostly Iranian-trained and backed militias, are trying to encircle Tal Afar, a mostly ethnic Turkmen town, as part of the offensive to capture Mosul, the last major city stronghold of Islamic State in Iraq.

About 3,000 families have left the town, with about half heading southwest, toward Syria, and half northward, into Kurdish-held territory, said Nuraldin Qablan, a Tal Afar representative in the Nineveh provincial council, now based in the Kurdish capital Erbil.

“We ask Kurdish authorities to open a safe passage for them,” he told Reuters.

He said Islamic State started on Sunday night to allow people to leave after it fired mortars at Popular Mobilisation positions at the airport, south of the city, and Popular Mobilisation forces responded.

The offensive started on Oct. 17 with air and ground support from a U.S.-led coalition. It is turning into the most complex campaign in Iraq since the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and empowered the nation’s Shi’ite majority.

The people fleeing Tal Afar are from the Sunni community, which makes up a majority in the Nineveh province in and around Mosul. The town also had a Shi’ite community, which fled in 2014 when the hardline Sunni group swept through the region.

Turkey is alarmed that regional rival Iran could extend its power through proxy groups to an area close to the Turkish and Syrian borders, where Ankara is backing rebels opposed to the Russian and Iranian-backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Citing its close ties to Tal Afar’s Turkmen’s population, Turkey has threatened to intervene to prevent revenge killings should Popular Mobilisation forces, known in Arabic as Hashid Shaabi, storm the town.

“People are fleeing due to the Hashid’s advance, there are great fears among the civilians,” said Qablan, who is also the deputy head of Nineveh’s provincial council.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi tried to allay fears of ethnic and sectarian killings in Tal Afar, saying any force sent to recapture it would reflect the city’s diversity.

Cutting the road to Tal Afar would seal off Mosul as the city is already surrounded to the north, south and east by Iraqi government and Kurdish peshmerga forces.

Iraq’s U.S.-trained Counter Terrorism Service unit breached Islamic State’s defenses in east Mosul at the end of October and is fighting to expand a foothold it gained there.

AIR STRIKES ON MOSUL

Iraqi military estimates put the number of insurgents in Mosul at 5,000 to 6,000, facing a 100,000-strong coalition of Iraqi government units, peshmerga fighters and Shi’ite militias.

Mosul’s capture is seen as crucial towards dismantling the caliphate, and Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, believed to have withdrawn to a remote area near the Syrian border, has told his fighters there can be no retreat.

A Mosul resident said air strikes have intensified on the western part of the city, which is divided by the Tigris river running through its center.

The strikes targeted an industrial area where Islamic State is thought to be making booby traps and transforming vehicles into car bombs, he said.

The militants are dug in among more than a million civilians as a defense tactic to hamper the strikes. They are moving around the city through tunnels, driving suicide car bombs into advancing troops and hitting them with sniper and mortar fire.

The Iraqi authorities did not release an overall estimate of the casualties, but the United Nations warned on Saturday that growing numbers of wounded civilians and military are overwhelming the capacity of the government and international aid groups.

More than 68,000 people are registered as displaced because of the fighting, moving from villages and towns around the city to government-held areas, according to U.N. estimates.

The figure does not include the thousands of people rounded up in villages around Mosul and forced to accompany Islamic State fighters to cover their retreat towards the city as human shields. It also does not included the 3,000 families which have fled Tal Afar.

In some cases, men of fighting age were separated from those groups and summarily killed, according to residents and rights groups.

(Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Death toll among Iran’s forces in Syrian war passes 1,000

Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) take part in an operation against Islamic State militants on the outskirts of the town of Hammam Al-Alil, south of Mosul, Iraq

By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

BEIRUT (Reuters) – More than 1,000 soldiers deployed by Iran to Syria to back the government side in its civil war have been killed, an Iranian official said, underlining Tehran’s increasing presence on front lines of the conflict.

It was a major increase in the reported death toll from just four months ago, when the Islamic Republic announced that 400 of its soldiers had died on Syria’s battlefields.

Iran has been sending fighters to Syria since the early stages of the more than five-year-old war to support its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, against rebels and Islamist militants including Islamic State trying to topple him.

Although many of the soldiers the Shi’ite Muslim Iran sends are its own nationals, it is casting its recruitment net wide, training and deploying Shi’ites from neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan as well. Half of the death toll reported in August were Afghan citizens.

“Now the number of Iran’s martyrs as defenders of shrine has exceeded 1,000,” Mohammadali Shahidi Mahallati, head of Iran’s Foundation of Martyrs, which offers financial support to the relatives of those killed fighting for Iran, was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.

Iran alludes to its fighters in Syria as “defenders of the shrine”, a reference to the Sayeda Zeinab mosque near Damascus, which is where a granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammad is said to be buried, as well as other shrines revered by Shi’ites.

Many Iranians initially opposed involvement in Syria’s war, harboring little sympathy for Assad. But now they are warming to the mission, believing that the Sunni jihadist Islamic State is a threat to the existence of their country that is best fought outside Iran’s borders.

With public opinion swinging increasingly behind the cause, numbers of volunteer fighters have soared far beyond what Tehran is prepared to deploy in Syria.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Exclusive: Watchdog condemns Syrian government, Islamic State use of banned chemical weapons

car parts to make car bombs

By Anthony Deutsch

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The executive body of the global chemical weapons watchdog voted on Friday to condemn the use of banned toxic agents by the Syrian government and by militant group Islamic State, a source who took part in the closed session said.

Roughly two-thirds of the 41 members on the Executive Council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), endorsed a U.S.-tabled text, the source told Reuters.

The OPCW’s Executive Council, which meets behind closed doors, seldom votes on such matters, generally operating through consensus. But this text was supported by 28 members, including Germany, France, the United States and Britain.

It was opposed by Russia, China, Sudan and Iran. There were nine abstentions. Russia and Iran are Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s main allies against rebels seeking to overthrow him. Western and Gulf Arab states back the rebels.

The U.S.-Russian split over Syria was striking as it was those two countries that in 2013 took the lead in getting the Damascus government to join the OPCW and avert threatened U.S.-led military intervention in Syria’s civil war.

A 13-month international inquiry by the OPCW and United Nations concluded in a series of reports that Syrian government forces, including helicopter squadrons, were responsible for the use of chlorine barrel bombs against civilians.

The OPCW-U.N. mission found that the Syrian government carried out three toxic attacks in March and April of last year, while Islamic State militants had used sulfur mustard gas.

The findings set the stage for a U.N. Security Council showdown between the five veto-wielding powers, likely pitting Russia and China against the United States, Britain and France over how those responsible for the attacks should be held accountable.

Syrian authorities deny having used chemical weapons in the conflict. Islamic State has not commented.

(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Iraqi forces preparing advance on south Mosul

captured Islamic State tank

By John Davison and Dominic Evans

SOUTH OF MOSUL/BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi security forces are preparing to advance toward Mosul airport on the city’s southern edge to increase pressure on Islamic State militants fighting troops who breached their eastern defenses, officers said on Thursday.

The rapid response forces, part of a coalition seeking to crush the jihadists in the largest city under their control in Iraq or Syria, took the town of Hammam al-Alil, just over 15 km (10 miles) south of Mosul, on Monday.

Officers say they plan to resume their advance north, up the western bank of the Tigris River towards the city of 1.5 million people who have lived under the ultra-hardline Sunni Islamists for more than two years.

More than three weeks after the U.S.-backed campaign to retake Mosul was launched, the city is almost surrounded by the coalition of nearly 100,000 fighters. But troops have entered only a handful of neighborhoods in the east of the city.

“We need to put wider pressure on the enemy in different areas,” said Major-General Thamer al-Husseini, commander of the elite police unit which is run by the Shi’ite-controlled Interior Ministry.

He said operations would resume within two days.

Lieutenant-Colonel Dhiya Mizhir said the target was an area overlooking Mosul airport, which has been rendered unusable by Islamic State to prevent attackers using it as a staging post for their offensive.

Army officers told Reuters in September the militants had moved concrete blast walls onto the runway to prevent planes from landing there.

Satellite pictures released by intelligence firm Stratfor also showed they had dug deep trenches in the runways and destroyed buildings to ensure clear lines of sight for defenders and to prevent advancing forces from using hangars or other facilities.

On the southern front, security forces took cover behind a mound of earth and fired at Islamic State positions from armored gun turrets.

The village of Karama was mostly deserted apart from a handful of residents and a few dozen Iraqi forces. A cement factory they recaptured three days ago was battered by gunfire.

“They used car bombs as we moved in and this street was heavily mined, but the battle wasn’t hard,” said 19-year-old recruit Abdel Sattar.

NIMRUD RUINS

Separate forces advancing on the eastern side of the Tigris targeted two villages on Thursday on the edge of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, a military statement said.

Troops from the Ninth Armoured Division took the village of Abbas Rajab, four km east of Nimrud, and raised the Iraqi flag.

The Iraqi government says Nimrud was bulldozed last year as part of Islamic State’s campaign to destroy symbols which the Sunni Muslim zealots consider idolatrous. It would be the first such site to be recaptured from Islamic State.

Counter terrorism forces and an armored division fighting in the east of the city have been battling to hold on to half a dozen districts they surged into a week ago.

They have been hit by waves of attacks by Islamic State units, including snipers, suicide bombers, assault fighters and mortar teams, who have used a network of tunnels under the city and civilian cover in the narrow streets to wear them down in lethal urban warfare.

Residents contacted by telephone on Thursday said aircraft from the U.S.-led coalition supporting the Iraqi forces were circling the skies above eastern Mosul. They heard the sound of heavy clashes, artillery and mortar fire.

The militants were hitting back, they said. “Daesh (Islamic State) fighters were firing mortar bombs from a garden next to us which they had taken from a Christian,” one person said.

“They were bombarding the Zahra neighborhood where the Iraqi forces are. The war planes hit back with small rockets and destroyed the mortar and killed three of them,” he said, adding he had moved his family to another district.

Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) forces have been fighting in Zahra for a week, sometimes gaining ground only to be pushed back on the defensive. A senior CTS officer said on Thursday the neighborhood was fully under control.

“I’m very happy. I can’t believe that we’re over this terrible nightmare,” said another resident who returned to Zahra after taking refuge outside the city. “But we’re still frightened that Daesh might return”.

“We need more attacks on the other neighborhoods to liberate them and drive Daesh further away.”

The militants, who have ruled Mosul with ruthless violence, displayed bodies of at least 20 people across the city in the last two days – five of them crucified at a road junction – saying they had been killed for trying to make contact with the attacking forces, residents have said.

The United Nations has warned of a possible exodus of hundreds of thousands of refugees from the city. So far 45,000 have been displaced, the International Organization for Migration said on Thursday.

Those figures exclude the thousands of people forced to accompany Islamic State fighters as human shields on their retreat into Mosul from towns and villages around the city.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Editing by Angus MacSwan and David Stamp)

U.N. says rations run out in east Aleppo, hopes for aid deal

People walk past rubble of damaged buildings in a rebel-held besieged area in Aleppo, Syria

By Stephanie Nebehay and Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – Aid workers in eastern Aleppo were distributing the last available food rations on Thursday as the quarter of a million people besieged in the Syrian city entered what is expected to be a cruel winter, U.N. humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland said.

Speaking in Geneva, Egeland said he was hopeful of a deal on a four-part humanitarian plan the United Nations sent to all parties to the conflict several days ago. The plan covers delivery of food and medical supplies, medical evacuations and access for health workers.

“I do believe we will be able to avert mass hunger this winter,” Egeland told reporters in Geneva, noting that east Aleppo last received relief supplies in early July.

“I don’t think anybody wants a quarter of a million people to be starving in east Aleppo,” he said.

Some families in the rebel-held area have not had food distributions for several weeks and food prices are skyrocketing, he said. Around 300 sick and wounded require medical evacuation, he added.

Syria’s government rejected a U.N. request to send aid to east Aleppo during November, but Egeland said he was confident that Damascus would give its permission if the new U.N. humanitarian initiative was accepted by all sides. He said he also had the clear impression that Russia would continue its pause in air strikes over the northern city.

Russia’s military will continue arranging ceasefires, or so-called “humanitarian pauses” in Syria, Interfax news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Thursday.

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said a survey based on nearly 400 interviews in eastern Aleppo between Oct 24 and Oct 26 found 44 percent of respondents wanted to leave if a secure exit route was available, while 40 percent wanted to stay.

“Those who wish to stay either didn’t know of any safe place to go, wanted to remain with family members, couldn’t afford the cost of moving, or feared they would not be able to return to their homes,” UNHCR said in a report.

Egeland, asked about expectations from the administration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, said: “Syria is the worst war, the worst humanitarian crisis, the worst displacement crisis, the worst refugee crisis in a generation. So we expect there to be continued, uninterrupted U.S. help and engagement in the coming months.”

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Tom Miles; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Disease stalks Yemen as hospitals, clinics devastated by war

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – More than half of war-battered Yemen’s hospitals and clinics are closed or only partially functioning, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday, warning a lack of adequate health services was increasing the risk of disease outbreaks.

Only 45 percent of 3,507 health facilities surveyed by WHO were fully functional and accessible, while more than 40 percent of districts faced a “critical” shortage of doctors, WHO said.

“These critical shortages in health services mean that more people are deprived of access to life-saving interventions,” WHO said in a statement.

“Absence of adequate communicable diseases management increases the risk of outbreaks such cholera, measles, malaria and other endemic diseases.”

The 18-month-old conflict between a Saudi Arabia-led coalition and the Iran-aligned Houthi group which controls much of northern Yemen has destroyed much of Yemen’s infrastructure, killed more than 10,000 people and displaced millions.

UNICEF says the humanitarian disaster in the country has left 7.4 million children in need of medical help and 370,000 at risk of severe acute malnutrition.

Yemen’s Health Ministry announced a cholera outbreak in early October in the capital Sanaa. By the end of the month, WHO said the number of suspected cholera cases had ballooned to more than 1,400.

In 42 percent of 276 districts surveyed by WHO there were only two doctors or less, while in nearly a fifth of districts there were none.

WHO said new mothers and their babies lacked essential ante-natal care and immunization services, while people suffering from acute or chronic conditions were forced to spend more on treatment or forgo treatment altogether.

(Reporting by Magdalena Mis; Editing by Ros Russell)