Category Archives: South and Central Asia

Super cyclone Amphan: evacuations in India and Bangladesh slowed by virus

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Thousands of migrant workers left jobless by Covid-19 pandemic are still on the roads, and evacuations have been hampered by distancing rules

The Bay of Bengal’s fiercest storm this century – super cyclone Amphan – was bearing down on millions of people in eastern India and Bangladesh on Wednesday, with forecasts of a potentially devastating and deadly storm surge.

Authorities have scrambled to stage mass evacuations away from the path of Super Cyclone Amphan, which is only the second “super cyclone” to form in the north-eastern Indian Ocean since records began.

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Afghan hospital attack: ‘I thought my baby had died and I would be next’

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Nineteen-year-old Soraya Ameri had just given birth when gunmen stormed the ward. She recounts her escape – and the desperate search for her daughter

Soraya Ameri’s premature baby daughter had been whisked off to an incubator and the new mother was lying down, exhausted and sore from her stitches, when the shooting started.

Gunmen – dressed in police uniforms – had stormed the maternity ward of a hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, where Ameri had just given birth. She was bundled into a safe room with others, one woman next to her in labour, but her baby was outside.

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‘My angel’: man who became face of India’s stranded helped home by stranger

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Image captured the plight of the millions of migrant labourers left unable to return home in the pandemic

A photograph of a migrant labourer, his face contorted with anguish as he sits on the roadside in Delhi speaking to his wife about their sick baby boy, has come to symbolise the ordeal of India’s daily wage workers; penniless, and unable to get home to their families because of the lockdown.

Rampukar Pandit, a construction worker in the Indian capital, had heard that his 11-month-old son was seriously unwell. With no public transport to reach his home in Begusarai in Bihar, 1,200 km (745 miles) away, he started walking. He reached Nizamuddin Bridge where, exhausted and hungry, he could go no further.

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South-east Asia’s biggest synthetic drugs raid: 200m meth tablets found in Myanmar

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Thousands of litres of methyl fentanyl point to ‘unprecedented’ production of opioids in so-called Golden Triangle area

Myanmar has made south-east Asia’s largest-ever seizure of synthetic drugs in raids that revealed “unprecedented” production of opioids in the area, the UN has said.

Between February and April, authorities swooped on labs in the lawless Kutkai area of Shan state, seizing nearly 200m meth tablets, 500kg (1,100lbs) of crystal meth, 300kg of heroin, and 3,750 litres of methyl fentanyl.

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Pakistan: teenage girls shot dead by relatives over online footage

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Father of one victim and brother of the other arrested in connection with the murders

Two female teenagers in Pakistan have been murdered by family members after a video emerged online of them associating with a man.

The pair, said to be aged 16 and 18, were shot dead by male relatives in their remote village in Pakistan’s North Waziristan province this week after footage was posted online of them in the company of a young man in a secluded area.

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Covid-19 cases in Brazil surpass Italy as virus surges in Latin America

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Mexico and Peru struggle to contain outbreaks while deaths in Spain fall to two-month low

Confirmed Covid-19 cases in Brazil have surpassed the total in Italy and are surging in Mexico and Peru as Latin America struggles to contain its fast-growing coronavirus outbreak.

Spain announced that 87 people had died there in the 24 hours to Sunday morning, the first time the figure has been below 100 in more than two months and a sign the virus is being contained in western Europe as it continues to spread aggressively in Russia, India and parts of Africa.

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Mothers in labour, pregnant women and babies were Kabul gunmen’s target – MSF

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Attack still unclaimed, but US defies Afghan government, blames Isis and says negotiations with Taliban must continue

Gunmen who attacked a maternity hospital in Kabul came “with the purpose of killing mothers in cold blood”, systematically shooting every woman in labour and new mothers they came across, the charity Médecins Sans Frontières has said.

The attack on Tuesday morning, aimed at the youngest of children and most vulnerable of women, shocked even a country that has endured decades of bloodshed and tens of thousands of civilian deaths.

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Hopes for peace appear to be slipping away in Afghanistan

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Peace process between the government and Taliban was crumbling before talks began

In the wake of a devastating attack in Kabul on Tuesday on a maternity unit that saw gunmen shoot women in labour, new mothers and their newborn babies, hopes of a peace process for Afghanistan appear to be slipping away as both the government and Taliban ramp up military operations.

The Taliban on Thursday attacked a city in Afghanistan’s east, killing five civilians and at least one soldier, and injuring dozens more with a truck bomb. The bomber had been targeting an army base in Gardez, but the explosives detonated before he reached it, leaving a too-familiar tangle of rubble and bodies.

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Global report: leaders urge free vaccines as France allows staycations

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French drugmaker criticised for giving US priority; Gordon Brown says Covid-19 solution is global

More than 140 world leaders and experts have called for future Covid-19 vaccines to be made available to everyone free of charge, amid growing tensions between drug companies and governments and a boycott of vaccine summits by the US.

Vaccines and treatments for the virus should not be patented, say the signatories to an open letter published in the run-up to next week’s meeting of the World Health Assembly, the policy-setting body of the UN’s World Health Organization. Instead, scientific breakthroughs must be shared across borders, they urge.

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FBI offers $1m reward for captors of Caitlan Coleman and Joshua Boyle

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  • US-Canadian couple were kidnapped in Afghanistan in 2012
  • After release Boyle was cleared of abusing Caitlan in Canada

The FBI has offered a $1m reward for the arrest and prosecution for those responsible for the kidnapping of US citizen Caitlan Coleman and her Canadian husband Joshua Boyle, eight years ago in Afghanistan.

The offer of a reward for their captors is the latest twist in the protracted saga of Coleman and Boyle, who were the subject of intense media scrutiny following their dramatic rescue in 2017 – and a subsequent trial over allegations of abuse by Boyle.

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Baby born during Kabul hospital attack survived, charity says

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Mother and child doing well but 18 other babies left motherless after deadly rampage

As gunmen rampaged through a Kabul maternity hospital on Tuesday, shooting new mothers, pregnant women and nurses, labour continued despite the slaughter, with one baby born during the attack, a charity has said.

Twenty-four people were killed, the majority women who had just given birth. They left behind 18 motherless babies, said the Afghan deputy minister of health, Wahid Majrooh, one of the first people to enter the hospital after the attack.

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Babies among dozens dead in attacks on Afghan hospital and funeral

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Ashraf Ghani orders resumption of anti-Taliban offensive after attacks in Kabul and Nangarhar

Gunmen attacked a hospital that houses a maternity clinic in Kabul, killing at least 16 people including two newborn babies, and a suicide bomber killed at least 24 others at a funeral on a morning of double tragedy for Afghanistan.

In the capital, soldiers raced out of the hospital carrying infants wrapped in bloodstained blankets to waiting ambulances, after the attackers rampaged their way through the wards.

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Factory behind India gas leak operated illegally until 2019

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Company that owns factory admitted it did not have valid environmental clearance

The chemical factory that leaked gas into a coastal Indian city on Thursday morning, killing at least 12 people and putting hundreds in hospital, was operating illegally until at least the middle of 2019, documents show.

In an affidavit [pdf] filed by LG Polymers in May 2019, as part of its application to expand the plastic plant’s operations, the South Korean multinational admitted it was operating its polystyrene plant without the mandatory environmental clearance from the Indian government.

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‘Love and desire’: how erotic poetry is helping Afghans through lockdown

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A new generation of poets in Afghanistan is exploring the physical side of love – and isolation is their inspiration

It has been weeks in lockdown for Hoda Khamosh, but the 23-year-old has managed to stick to a routine. This includes sitting down in the afternoons to write poetry, mostly with an erotic spin to it.

In the absence of touch and seeing friends and loved ones, she – along with many others – has turned to erotic poetry, convinced that, “it will help to get through these difficult days”.

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Bangladesh garment factories reopen despite coronavirus threat to workers

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In an effort to revive the stricken industry plant owners restart production, but labour activists claim safety measures are illusory

Workers in garment factories in Bangladesh, which have reopened despite a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, have said their lives are being put at risk as they are forced to return to work in cramped conditions where mask-wearing and physical distancing are not enforced.

Directives by the Bangladesh government stated that garment factories, which supply some of the biggest brands in the world and produce 84% of the country’s total exports, would be allowed to resume operations, but only if they maintain physical distancing and the ban on public transportation.

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Indian and Chinese soldiers injured in cross-border fistfight, says Delhi

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Troops also threw stones in face-off involving 150 soldiers at remote crossing point near Tibet, says Indian army

Several Indian and Chinese soldiers have been injured in a cross-border clash involving fistfights and stone-throwing at a remote but strategically important mountain pass near Tibet, the Indian army said on Sunday.

There have been long-running border tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours, with a bitter war fought over the Indian north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh in 1962.

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Rohingya refugees arrive on ‘de facto detention island’ in Bangladesh

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Rights groups decry relocation of people picked up at sea after fleeing camps in Cox’s Bazar

Hundreds of Rohingya Muslims, including children, have arrived on “a de facto detention island” in Bangladesh after being stranded at sea for weeks.

Rights groups had warned that the refugees, who had been turned away from other countries in the region, were at risk of starvation and abuse by traffickers. It is believed that other boats remain adrift.

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Bangladeshi journalist is jailed after mysterious 53-day disappearance

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Campaigners warn Shafiqul Islam Kajol faces a lengthy sentence as his family worries about his exposure to Covid-19 in prison

Fifty-three days after he disappeared, Bangladeshi journalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol turned up on Sunday in police custody at a border town 150 miles from where he had last been seen.

“I am alive,” he told his son by phone, the first time the family had heard his voice since his disappearance in early March, a day after a case was filed against him and 31 others under the country’s controversial new Digital Security Act.

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India chemical leak: more evacuations amid fears of second gas release

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Everyone within 5km of the plant in Andhra Pradesh told to leave over fear of repeat of accident that has left at least 11 dead

Indian officials have evacuated more people from the area around a chemical plant in the south of the country that leaked toxic gas, killing at least 11 people and sickening hundreds more.

There was confusion about whether the wider evacuation orders were sparked by a renewed leak at the LG Chem factory in Andhra Pradesh, or by the fear that rising temperatures at the plant could lead to another leak.

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India’s chemical plant disaster: another case of history repeating itself

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Decades after Bhopal, lack of law enforcement and political will plagues Indian industry

The gas leak at a chemical factory in Visakhapatnam will immediately remind many in India and beyond of the 1984 Bhopal disaster, widely considered the world’s worst industrial disaster.

So far, the scale of the tragedies are very different. Eleven people are confirmed to have died in Visakhapatnam – but with hundreds hospitalised and thousands affected, there are fears the toll will rise. In Bhopal, 4,000 people died within days of the toxic gas leak from a pesticide plant and thousands more in the following years.

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