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Continue reading ‘بدء حملة للقضاء على الكلاب السائبة في البصرة بعد يوم من وفاة طفل بداء الكلب’ »

Weeks of fighting have shut off many essential services in the Shia neighbourhood.

Living conditions in Sadr City, already one of Baghdad’s most impoverished slums, have deteriorated sharply following weeks of fighting between Shia militiamen and United States-backed Iraqi troops that has killed hundreds, according to Iraqi lawmakers.

“The situation has deteriorated significantly because most of the services have been stopped,” said Aliyah Nassif Jassim, a member of parliament from the Iraqia bloc, who recently visited the district as part of a parliamentary delegation. “Many civilian homes have been destroyed as a result of the air strikes and the military operations.”

A fragile four-day ceasefire agreement between radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Iraqi government signed on May 12 has reduced but not halted fighting in the area, a Shia neighbourhood run by Sadr militiamen. The US military has maintained that Iranian fighters are supporting Sadr loyalists there. Iran has denied having a military presence in Iraq.

Salih al-Agili, an MP loyal to Sadr who lives in Sadr City, said more than 100 houses have been destroyed by the continuous skirmishing and air strikes since the outbreak of hostilities more than a month ago.

Continue reading ‘Sadr City Conditions Worsen’ »

GENEVA, May 9 (UNHCR) – Faced with a looming funding shortfall, the UN refugee agency warned on Friday that it could soon be forced to reduce and, in some cases, to halt a number of aid programmes for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees unless donor governments provide extra support.

Agency officials told a donor meeting at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva on Friday that they lacked US$127 million required for assistance programmes for uprooted people in and around Iraq through the end of the year.

“We will not be able to help hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Iraqi refugees and internally displaced if we do not receive funding for the remainder of 2008,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. “Without this support, the humanitarian crisis we have faced over the past two years may grow even larger.”

In January, UNHCR appealed for US$261 million for its operations on behalf of some of the 4.7 million people uprooted by the conflict in Iraq. It has so far received US$134 million, but urgently requires the remainder to ensure the continuation of direct assistance programmes for many of Iraq’s internally displaced people (IDPs) as well as those who have fled elsewhere in the region, including to Syria, Jordan, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey. The agency also cares for some 41,000 non-Iraqi refugees in Iraq, including Palestinians, Iranians, Turks and others.

Most of the refugees outside Iraq are in Syria and Jordan and are living in urban areas such as Damascus and Amman. The most vulnerable of these benefit from medical, food and direct financial assistance. Last month in Syria, more than 128,000 refugees received food assistance and close to 40,000 received subsidized health care. Many of them are running out of money and finding it increasingly difficult to survive amid a dramatic increase in food prices across the region.

In addition to direct cash assistance to some of the most vulnerable refugees, UNHCR is supporting efforts by governments in the region that are struggling to cope with the huge numbers of Iraqis who have strained local resources and infrastructure, including schools and health systems.

UNHCR has registered more than 280,000 Iraqis in neighbouring states; given health assistance to some 250,000 people and provided educational support in Syria, Jordan and other countries that has enabled some 72,000 refugee children to attend school. This year, the agency has set a target of getting another 70,000 Iraqi refugee children into school, but with the shortfall in funding, many Iraqi children might miss out on education.

In Egypt and Lebanon, where most Iraqi refugee children are enrolled in private schools, more than 4,000 children will not receive the education grants that UNHCR offered last year to enable them to continue their education.

Health programmes for Iraqis could be drastically reduced and the provision of some specialized medical interventions might come to a complete halt. By August, UNHCR will not be able to cover all basic health needs of Iraqis, and many seriously ill Iraqis will not be able to receive their monthly medication.

Since January, 150,000 Iraqis in Syria and close 19,000 in Jordan received basic health care assistance. With health facilities compromised in many parts of Iraq and many doctors no longer available, a growing number of ailing Iraqis are becoming refugees as they leave home in search of medical care elsewhere.

Distribution programmes in Syria and Jordan, the lifeline of 150,000 refugees who received food aid in 2007-2008, could be reduced, forcing many Iraqis into further destitution and raising the likelihood of higher malnutrition rates and increased child labour.

Omar, a 69-year-old refugee from Baghdad, said he would die a “slow death” if assistance was stopped. He and his family have depended on food and medical assistance since they fled to Syria in 2006, and are paying rent from remittances from Iraq that he says are “our only way to survive.”

The funding crisis comes as fuel, food and rent costs have risen dramatically.

In November, 5 percent of Iraqi refugees interviewed in a UNHCR-commissioned survey by IPSOS Market Research said that they live on less than US$100 a month. By March, that number had risen to 20 percent.

UNHCR - UNHCR seeks donor help amid funding shortfall for Iraq operation

U.S.-back Iraqi forces are gearing up for a new push deeper into Sadr City that could worsen fighting and displace hundreds, a government spokesman in Baghdad said. “There will be a big offensive soon,” said Iraqi government spokesman Tahseen al-Sheikhly. He did not say when the operation would go forward. In east Baghdad the Iraqi government has readied two stadiums and one former military base to serve as camps for Sadr City residents who may be forced to flee the fighting, al-Sheikhly said. “We don’t want any losses in the civilians,” said al-Sheikhly.

More than 1,010 have died in Sadr City since fighting erupted at the end of March, according to Iraqi government figures offered by al-Sheikhly. Another 2,930 have been wounded, he said. Ongoing fighting continues to worsen the crisis in the vast Shi’ite slum, the Baghdad stronghold of the Shi’ite Mahdi Army militia. Mohammed Kamel Hassan, a volunteer organizer in Sadr City for the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization, said up to 500 families have already been displaced from areas around the fighting in recent days. “We have a big movement,” said Hassan, whose organization is working closely with the Iraqi government on new emergency plans. “The situation is very bad.”

Continue reading ‘Baghdad’s Coming Refugee Crisis - TIME’ »

“When Umm Mohammed threw herself over the body of her son who was hit by a sniper’s bullet just outside their house in Sadr City, she would have never thought that the next bullet would kill her,” a local resident of the Shiite slum said.

Editor’s Note: This is the independent Iraki newsagency Aswat Al Iraq’s (Voices of Iraq) English version of their feature in Arabic “مواطنون من مدينة الصدر يروون معاناتهم اليومية بعد اكثر من (40) يوما من المواجهات “. Which means:

“Sadr City Citizens relate their daily suffering after more than (40) days of confrontations”

We have posted the original Arabic immediately below.

For the last six weeks, Sadr City, the stronghold of Mahdi army fighters, has been a scene of uninterrupted clashes between the Shiite militiamen and U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Pointing to Umm Mohammed’s house, Abu Muhannad, a neighbor, added sadly, “Umm Mohammed, tried to draw her son into the house, but her body remained along with her son’s corpse on the sidewalk where their house is located, while neighbors watched powerlessly through their windows as nobody was able to evacuate or call an ambulance.”

The neighbor told Aswat al-Iraq - Voices of Iraq - (VOI), “We heard Abu Mohammed’s cries for help as he could not recover his beloved due to being unable to walk having lost one of his legs in explosion in Baghdad last year.”

“We all failed him since none of us were able to lend a hand for fear of being killed by another sniper’s bullet,” Abu Muhannad bitterly explains.

After 40 days of severe clashes between followers of the anti-U.S. Shiite Cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and U.S. and Iraqi troops, the slum, located in eastern Baghdad with a population of almost 2.5 million, seems rich in stories similar to that of Umm Mohammed.

Abdul Khaliq Swi’adi, 46, who moved his family into a house on the outskirts of Sadr city, said “a U.S. helicopter dropped a bomb on my house while I was inside. Fire consumed the house and I was trembling as I was unable to jump out for fear that the soldiers may shoot me.”

“Without even thinking, I was forced to go outside with my hands up on the assumption that I will not be shot at by soldiers and survive by a miracle,” Swi’adi described.
Sadr City is a densely populated city causing houses to be built attached to each other without any space in between. Parks, unused land, and vast spaces are not readily available in the city.

Ahmed Karim, a Sadr City resident, says “U.S. helicopters fly at low attitude day and night and now and then drop bombs on different places in the city.”
The U.S. army claims that copters and troops target gunmen who take position “on rooftops of the houses.”

Hazim al-Rubaie, 32, a resident of central Sadr City, narrates “a couple of days ago, an old man fell while trying to cross the main street near Dakhel Petrol Station.”
“He was hit by a sniper’s bullet. None dared to approach him to save his life. He bled to death,” al-Rubaie says.

The Iraqi Ministry of Health has been unable to release the civilian death toll of the clashes on the grounds that “the security authorities in the Interior Ministry are the only party authorized to issue such statistics,” the ministry’s media spokesman apologetically clarified to VOI.

To draw the attention of the public opinion to Sadr City’s suffering, 60 MPs representing different parliamentary blocs staged a sit-in late in April. So far however, clashes continue in the city on a daily basis.

Families began leaving the dangerous spots to safer areas outside Sadr City due to the continued bombardment.

Abdel Zahara al-Shwili tells VOI, “I moved my family to my brother’s house in the nearby Shaab neighborhood.”

Saadi al-Lami, a resident of Sadr City’s most violent hot spot, says “most families in section 11 of Sadr City have left their houses seeking safer places.” 

The Iraqi government decided on May 7 to set up safe zones for the displaced from the violence-wracked slum of Sadr city according to a statement by the spokesman for Baghdad’s security plan command.

Aswat Aliraq

BAGHDAD, 7 May 2008 (IRIN) - The Iraqi authorities in the self-ruled northern region of Kurdistan are gearing up to face a possible cholera outbreak which last year affected nearly 4,200 people, and caused the deaths of 24 nationwide, a local official said on 6 May.

“We have allocated 25 billion Iraqi dinars (US$20 million) to fight any cholera outbreak in Kurdistan after concerns rose last month when at least 500 patients with diarrhoea and vomiting were admitted to hospitals. So far no cases of the disease have been confirmed,” said Mohammed Sadiq from the regional Health Ministry.

“We remain alert that there could be another outbreak of cholera this season as the factors that cause cholera still exist: a shortage of clean drinking water, high temperatures during the summer and poor sanitation,” Sadiq told IRIN on 7 May.
He said the Kurdistan regional government had started a media campaign to raise awareness about the risks of cholera, how to keep food clean, and how to boil water.

The last cholera outbreak was first detected on 14 August 2007 in the northern city of Kirkuk. It then spread to Sulaimaniyah, Arbil, Dohuk, Tikrit, Mosul, Diyala, Basra, Wasit, Baghdad and Anbar provinces. The hardest-hit provinces were Kirkuk with 2,309 cases, and Sulaimaniyah with 870.

By October 2007, the Iraqi government and UN agencies were saying the outbreak was under control as more than 70 percent of the country’s nearly 4,200 laboratory-confirmed cases were being treated successfully.

Cholera is a gastrointestinal disease typically spread by drinking contaminated water and can cause severe diarrhoea which, in extreme cases, can lead to fatal dehydration. It can be prevented by treating drinking water with chlorine and by improving hygiene conditions.

IRAQ: Kurdistan bracing for possible cholera outbreak