Dubai: Kerala Muslim body serves Iftar to 2,500 people

Agencies
May 18, 2019

Dubai, May 18: A Kerala Muslim centre here is serving Iftar meal every day to more than 2,500 people from all walks of life, according to a media report.

Iftar is the evening meal with which Muslims end their daily Ramzan fast at sunset.

There are 210 volunteers, divided into seven groups, who ensure smooth and clean distribution of Iftar meals, Gulf News reported.

"Most of the volunteers are drivers, A/C maintenance workers, office assistants and people who do other routine jobs. But, we also have businessmen and professional executives who have been volunteering with us," Ebrahim Elettil, president of the Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre’s (KMCC) said.

"When we started the community Iftar in 2012, we were serving only 1,500 people. Over the years, the number of people coming to have iftar increased. On average we serve 2,550 Iftar meals. Our volunteers are the pillars of this success,” Elettil said.

Even people with disabilities are part of the team. The preparation for the volunteering team, who also fast, begins a month before Ramzan.

"The registration of new members and renewal of old members is done and they are assigned duties in rotation. They are also trained by hygiene officers from some hotels. Every day we have about 150 volunteers present," Ebrahim Iritty, chairman of the volunteers' wing, was quoted as saying.

The volunteers arrive several hours before the Iftar time to take care of all the necessary arrangements. Lieutenant Colonel Khalifa Ali Rashid, assistant director at the al-Muraqqabat police station said that the KMCC volunteers were doing an amazing job by serving such a large number of people from all walks of life.

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News Network
May 6,2024

rafaheast.jpg

The Israeli regime is forcibly evacuating Palestinians from the eastern part of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip amid the prospect of its widely-discouraged ground invasion.

“The estimate is around 100,000 people,” an Israeli military spokesman told journalists on Monday when asked how many people were being evacuated.

International organizations, including the United Nations, have repeatedly warned the regime against invading the city, citing its hosting around 1.5 million Palestinian refugees.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said a ground assault on Rafah would “put the final nail in the coffin” for humanitarian aid operations in the Gaza Strip.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs also said, “Any ground operation would mean more suffering and death,” with an official saying “It could be a slaughter of civilians.”

Multiple aid agencies, including the Norwegian Refugee Council, have likewise warned against a Rafah offensive.

The NRC said such an invasion “would profoundly exacerbate the already catastrophic levels of need and the humanitarian emergency for millions of civilians with nowhere left to go.”

The official alleged Hamas had killed three Israeli forces on Sunday, attacking them from Rafah.

The evacuation order came a sat least 22 people lost their lives in the regime’s airstrikes killed in Rafah earlier on Monday.

Rafah’s evacuation “is part of our plans to dismantle Hamas,” the Israeli spokesman added, referring to the Palestinian resistance movement that has been defending Gaza in the face of the war.

The Palestinians have fled there from the ravages of a war that the regime began waging against Gaza on October 7, following a retaliatory operation by the coastal sliver’s resistance groups.

At least 34,683 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 78,018 others injured so far during the brutal military onslaught.

On Friday, Hossam Badran, a member of Hamas’ Political Bureau, said Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence on carrying out a ground invasion of Rafah was a key stumbling block in negotiations aimed at a truce agreement.

The Israeli premier has said the regime would go ahead with invading the city “with or without” a truce.

Hamas has, however, asserted that the regime has failed to defeat the resistance during the war.

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