Food security crisis means acute malnutrition among under-fives at highest levels since war engulfed the country
Almost 100,000 children under the age of five are at risk of dying in Yemen as the country slides back into a hunger crisis.
An analysis by UN agencies says the coronavirus pandemic, economic problems and conflict have led to the highest levels of malnutrition ever recorded in parts of the country.
Continue reading...Rasul Iran Nezhad and Shiva Mohammad Panahi drowned along with their children Anita and Armin
Four Iranian Kurds who died trying to cross the Channel in high winds were members of one family who paid smugglers thousands of euros after two failed attempts to reach Britain, the Guardian has been told.
Rasul Iran Nezhad and his wife, Shiva Mohammad Panahi, both 35, and two of their children, Anita, nine, and Armin, six, drowned as they tried to reach Britain by boat, according to a relative of the family and the Iranian-Kurdish human rights organisation Hengaw.
Continue reading...Border agency Frontex accused by campaigners and MEPs of evading its responsibilities towards people in distress
The EU has been accused of condemning migrants to death by critics of its recent €100m (£90m) deals for drone surveillance over the Mediterranean Sea.
Campaigners and MEPs have accused the EU’s border agency Frontex of investing in technology to monitor migrants from afar and skirt its responsibilities towards people in distress.
Continue reading...Protests take place in several countries against French president in aftermath of crackdown
On the front page of a hardline Iranian newspaper, he was the “Demon of Paris”. In the streets of Dhaka he was decried as a leader who “worships Satan”. Outside Baghdad’s French embassy, a likeness of Emmanuel Macron was burned along with France’s flag.
Rage is growing across the Muslim world at the French president and his perceived attacks on Islam and the prophet Muhammad, leading to calls for boycotts of the French products and security warnings for France’s citizens in majority-Muslim states.
Continue reading...Australia’s foreign minister says 18 women, including 13 Australians, on Qatar Airways flight were subjected to compulsory intimate searches
The government of Qatar has said it “regrets any distress or infringement on the personal freedom of any traveller” caused by a decision to conduct intimate medical examinations of women transiting through Doha international airport, in what it said was an “urgently-decided search” to find the mother of an abandoned baby.
On Wednesday morning the Australian government confirmed that 18 women on a flight from Doha to Sydney were subjected to the compulsory medical examination, including 13 Australian citizens. Passengers from 10 flights leaving Doha on the evening of 2 October were affected.
Continue reading...Academics’ analysis of burial plots points to excess deaths level in crisis-ridden country
A groundbreaking study using high-resolution satellite imagery to analyse graveyards has found that deaths have nearly doubled in Aden, the centre of Yemen’s coronavirus outbreak.
The discovery has given a sense of the true scale of the havoc the pandemic has wreaked on the vulnerable country.
Continue reading...Iran calls Paris’s response to teacher’s killing ‘unwise’ amid protests across Muslim world
The backlash against Emmanuel Macron following his insistence that publication of caricatures of the prophet Muhammad is fundamental to freedom of speech has spread, with angry international protests, cyber-attacks against French websites and warnings that the president’s response is “unwise”.
Muslims in France – and elsewhere – are also furious at what they claim is a heavy-handed government clampdown on their communities in the wake of the killing 11 days ago of the high school teacher Samuel Paty.
Continue reading...Doctors say cases and dozens of deaths from the disease have occurred since August floods, with cases of malaria and cholera also on the rise
An outbreak of Rift Valley fever has killed dozens of people and infected more than 1,000 in Sudan’s Northern state, according to local doctors.
Doctors told the Guardian the disease has spread across the towns of Merowe, Al Dabbah and Karima, mainly among cattle herders.
Continue reading...Sotheby’s in London had been due to sell more than 200 items from cash-strapped museum
Among the hundreds of precious items at Jerusalem’s Museum for Islamic Art is an ostentatious helmet that may have belonged to an Ottoman sultan, a page from a nearly millennium-old Qur’an, and a 13th-century Mamluk glass bowl.
While no doubt treasured, these artefacts can no longer be considered priceless. In a controversial Sotheby’s auction previously set to take place in London on Tuesday, the bowl was estimated at £60,000-£80,000 and the helmet and Qur’an leaf at £200,000-£300,000 each.
Continue reading...Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri was ‘king of clubs’ in US wanted list and had $10m bounty on his head
Saddam Hussein’s right-hand man, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a longtime fugitive, has died, according to the late Iraqi dictator’s daughter and his Ba’ath party.
After Saddam’s capture following the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, the wiry, red-haired general remained the “king of clubs” in Washington’s deck of cards of wanted regime figures, with a $10m bounty on his head.
Continue reading...Calls for boycott of French goods after president’s remarks at tribute to murdered teacher Samuel Paty
France has appealed for foreign governments to stamp out calls by what it calls a “radical minority” for a boycott of French products after Emmanuel Macron’s public backing of the Muhammad caricatures.
The appeal came as anger escalated across the Islamic world over the president’s remarks at a national tribute to the murdered high-school teacher Samuel Paty last week, with Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, calling on Monday for a complete boycott of French products in Turkey.
Continue reading...Kim Mills was one of nine women taken off a Qatar Airways flight in Doha, and the only one not to be strip-searched as authorities hunted the mother of an abandoned newborn baby
An Australian woman has described the “terrifying” experience of being taken off a Qatar Airways flight by authorities who strip-searched passengers as they tried to identify the mother of an infant found in the Doha airport toilets.
Kim Mills was one of nine women taken off a Qatar Airways flight bound for Sydney on 2 October and led through the bowels of the Hamad International airport to what appeared to be a dark carpark or turning circle, where three ambulances were waiting to perform medical examinations to determine if any of the women had recently given birth.
Continue reading...Sanctions punished the Sudanese people, not their rulers. The US extracting compensation is one more hypocritical act
Few countries in the world have been subjected to as many punitive sanctions as Sudan. After the deposed president Omar al-Bashir came to power in a military coup in 1989, the country was gradually cut off from the rest of the world, with the upholding of human rights the rationale. Economic sanctions were followed by a spot on the state sponsors of terrorism list, and then by the indictment of Bashir by the international criminal court. At some point it became hard to keep up with all the legislation, punishment for the reckless harbouring of terrorists in the 1990s, and the brutal slaughter of marginalised ethnic groups in areas such as Darfur. There were sanctions on individuals, a US travel ban on all Sudanese-born people, acts of Congress and lawsuits by members 9/11 victims’ families.
The country became a sort of human rights cause celebre, attracting Hollywood stars and a vast network of lobbyists in Washington who, whenever it seemed like there might be a relaxation of sanctions, campaigned fiercely to keep them going. Bashir was a president over whom it was easy to reach consensus. Here was an African brute in the classic mould, a military man who turned on his own people, and a sharia-wielding terror sponsor to boot.
Continue reading...Thirteen Australians reportedly among women taken off flight at Doha and subjected to medical examination after newborn found abandoned in airport
The Australian government has registered “serious concerns” with Qatari authorities after women on a flight from Doha to Sydney were ordered to disembark the plane and subjected to a strip search and a medical examination.
Flight QR908 to Sydney was due to leave Hamad International airport at Doha at 8.30 on Friday 2 October, but was delayed for four hours, apparently after a newborn infant was found dead in the airport.
Continue reading...At least 400,000 people who fled Isis are still interred in the north of the country, fearing they are not wanted in postwar Iraq
On a midsummer morning six years ago, Ziad Abdulqader Nasir’s short walk to Friday prayers at Mosul’s Great Mosque of al-Nuri, one of Iraq’s oldest shrines, was abruptly interrupted by the arrival of stern men carrying guns.
Nasir and his neighbours were ushered inside, some of the newcomers set up cameras, and others sat the puzzled worshippers in neat lines on the carpet.
Continue reading...Stephanie Williams, the acting head of the United Nations mission in Libya, announced that rival forces in Libya had agreed a permanent nationwide ceasefire, including the departure of all foreign fighters and mercenaries from the country for a minimum of three months.
'This is a good day for the Libyan people,' she said as UN chief António Guterres asked nations to respect the 'fundamental step towards peace and stability in Libya'
Continue reading...Donald Trump seeks to score points from deal; Palestinians call it ‘a new stab in the back’
Israel and Sudan have agreed to work towards normalising relations in a deal brokered by the US that would make Sudan the third Arab country to set aside hostilities with Israel in the past two months.
Donald Trump sealed the agreement in a phone call on Friday with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, his Sudanese counterpart, Abdalla Hamdok, and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of Sudan’s transitional military council.
Continue reading...Deal includes departure of all foreign fighters for at least three months and prisoner exchange
Rival forces in Libya have agreed a permanent nationwide ceasefire including the departure of all foreign fighters and mercenaries from the country for a minimum of three months.
“This is a good day for the Libyan people,” said Stephanie Williams, the acting head of the United Nations mission in Libya. She added that she saluted the courage and patriotism of the negotiators who made the deal at UN-sponsored talks in Geneva between military officers representing forces in the east and west of the country.
Continue reading...Mustafa al-Kadhimi also urges Europe to assist the Middle Eastern nation’s debt-ridden economy
Iraq’s prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, has warned that he is being forced into an impossible balancing act between the US and Iran, as he urged Europe to come to the aid of his country’s debt-ridden economy.
Appointed as prime minister in June, Kadhimi – a British citizen and former journalist – came to power after unprecedented street protests over corruption, and has since governed with a simple programme of early elections, better security and preventing the collapse of his oil-dependent economy.
Continue reading...Trump administration reportedly considering move against organisations that documented Israeli rights abuses
The Trump administration is reportedly considering labelling a number of leading international humanitarian organisations as antisemitic after they documented Israeli rights abuses against Palestinians, including settlement building in the occupied territories.
The groups include the UK-based Amnesty International and Oxfam as well as the US organisation Human Rights Watch. Amnesty International accused the Trump administration, and the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, of attempting “to silence and intimidate international human rights organisations”.
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