Children including 10-day-old baby rescued from ruins as Turkey-Syria quake toll nears 24,000

News Network
February 11, 2023

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Istanbul, Feb 11: Rescue crews have saved a 10-day-old baby and his mother trapped under a toppled building in Turkey and dug several people, including children, out from other sites as the death toll from the devastating Turkey-Syria earthquake approached 24,000.

Officials and medics said on Friday 20,213 people had died in Turkey and 3,553 in Syria. The confirmed total now stands at 23,766. Many more people remain under the rubble.

Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said authorities should have reacted faster to this week's huge earthquake.

"Although we have the largest search and rescue team in the world right now, it is a reality that search efforts are not as fast as we wanted them to be," Erdogan said on Friday.

Erdogan had previously admitted that the initial response after the earthquake was slow due to adverse weather conditions, damaged roads, and the large area that affected the country's 10 provinces.

Some residents of the region have complained that there were no aid workers in their area in the critical hours after the earthquake, a charge that politicians, opposed to Erdogan's government, blamed.

However, Erdogan further said that the search and rescue operation continues with the joining of teams from all over the world.

Speaking in the earthquake-hit Adiyaman province, he also said that looting of shops had taken place in some areas, adding that the state of emergency declared in the area would allow the state authorities to take the necessary punishments.

Erdogan also said after visiting displaced people sheltering in tents, if people choose to move out of the affected cities, the government will pay their rent for one year.

Syrian state media also announced on Friday that the Syrian government has approved humanitarian aid to all war-torn areas of the country, a move that could speed up the arrival of aid to millions of people affected by Monday's deadly earthquake.

The said distribution of aid will be done in cooperation with the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the Syrian Red Crescent to ensure that the aid reaches those who need it.

Also, the Syrian government has declared Lattakia, Hama, Aleppo, and Idlib as the most affected areas by the earthquake and will create a rehabilitation fund.

The Turkey-Syria border is one of the world's most active earthquake zones. Monday's quake was the largest Turkey has seen since 1939, when 33,000 people died in eastern Erzincan province. In 1999, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake killed more than 17,000.

The United Nations World Food Program committed $77 million on Friday to provide food rations and hot meals to 874,000 people affected by the deadly earthquake in Syria and Turkey.

The number in need of aid "includes 284,000 newly displaced people in Syria and 590,000 people in Turkey, which includes 45,000 refugees and 545,000 internally displaced people", the Rome-based organization said in a statement.

In the first four days since deadly earthquakes struck the region, WFP has delivered food assistance to 115,000 people in Syria and Turkey.

"We're providing mainly hot meals, ready-to-eat food rations, and family food packages -- things that require no cooking facilities and can be consumed immediately," said Corinne Fleischer, the WFP's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa.

"For the thousands of people affected by the earthquakes, food is one of the top needs right now and our priority is to get it to the people who need it fast."

WFP has announced that despite the difficulties in getting food in Syria, which has been devastated by the conflict, it has so far delivered food to 43 thousand people in the country.

Thanks to stockpiles inside the country, the agency said ready-to-eat rations are available for 100,000 people, and other rations that require cooking facilities for 1.4 million people for a month.

Meanwhile, the United Nations said on Friday that it was rapidly depleting the stockpile it had in Syria ahead of the devastating earthquake and needed quick resupply to support the millions affected.

The Bab al-Hawa crossing from Turkey is currently the only way UN aid can reach civilians in war-torn Syria. This is while Syria is under severe international sanctions.

The United Nations has called for politics to be stripped out of the disaster response to facilitate aid delivery.

Katrina Bohme, from the World Health Organization headquarters team, said that no obstacle to help the victims is acceptable.

"We need to ensure access to assistance and health care for all those in need. Collectively as the UN, we will be measured on whether we can enable this," she told a briefing in Geneva.

UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, had 30,000 so-called relief items – mattresses, blankets, kitchen sets, plastic sheets, jerry cans and sleeping mats – and 20,000 tents already in Syria before the earthquake.

"We have been distributing them since day one," said Sivanka Dhanapala, the UNHCR representative in the country. "A lot of this is being sent out and now needs to be replenished as quickly as possible," he said via video link.

The UN Human Rights Secretary-General also called for an immediate ceasefire in Syria on Friday in order to facilitate the delivery of aid to all the victims of the devastating earthquake in the region.

"UN human rights chief Volker Turk calls for an immediate ceasefire in Syria, and full respect for human rights and humanitarian law obligations so help can reach everyone," the UN rights office said in a tweet.

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News Network
November 20,2023

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As many as 59 Palestinian journalists have been killed and dozens injured during the Israeli regime's ongoing war on the Gaza Strip, says an independent human rights advocacy group.

Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor provided the information in a press statement released through Palestinian media on Sunday.

According to the statement, the fatalities equaled "the highest-ever number of journalists killed in wars and conflicts in modern history."

The group attributed the regime's brutality towards journalists to its efforts to impose "a real and comprehensive media blackout" during the war.

The Israeli regime started the war on Gaza after the territory's Palestinian resistance groups carried out the surprise Operation al-Aqsa Storm against the occupied territories on October 7 in response to the regime’s intensified crimes against the Palestinian people.

Gaza's Health Ministry says at least 13,000 Palestinians, including more than 5,000 children, have so far been killed, and about 30,000 people have been injured.

The killing spree targeting journalists, Euro-Med Monitor said, came amid unfounded allegations by some Israeli officials that Palestinian press crews had prior knowledge of the October 7 operation.

According to the group, "Israel purposefully [has] left no safe haven for journalists in the Gaza Strip. Journalists were targeted even when they were wearing press jackets in the field, in press tents erected for media coverage next to hospitals, or even in their family homes."

The latest of the fatalities were caused on Saturday, when the regime's forces killed two journalists in an airstrike targeting Gaza's Bureij refugee camp.

The victims were identified as Sari Mansour and his colleague Hassouna Salim. They lost their lives after Mansour’s home came under an Israeli bombardment inside the camp, which is located in the central Gaza Strip.

According to Euro-Med Monitor, the Israeli war has led to complete or partial destruction of at least 117 press offices.

The regime has also restricted satellite channels operating in the Palestinian territories during the war, including Lebanon's al-Mayadeen television network, and has threatened to restrict Qatar's Al Jazeera network.

The advocacy body added that it has "received identical testimonies from [Palestinian] journalists expressing their fear that the media equipment they received from international organizations via Israel may include location-tracking and eavesdropping devices, which may have facilitated their targeting during the war."

Euro-Med Monitor asserted that targeting journalists is considered a war crime under international humanitarian law. 

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News Network
November 18,2023

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The Supreme Court of Yemen has rejected Kerala nurse Nimisha Priya's appeal against the death sentence. Nimisha Priya, a Malayali nurse, was sentenced to death in Yemen over murder charges in 2017. She was convicted of murdering Yemeni national Talal Abdo Mahdi.

The Centre had on Thursday informed the Delhi High Court about Yemen's Supreme Court's verdict rejecting Nimnisha Priya's appeal.

Priya was convicted of killing Mahdi by injecting him with sedatives in an attempt to recover her passport from his possession. The Centre further submitted that the ultimate authority to make the final decision now rests with the President of Yemen.

On Thursday, the Delhi HC gave the Centre a week's time to decide on a request from Priya's mother to travel to Yemen given the travel ban for Indian nationals due to the ongoing civil war in the country.

Priya's mother sought permission to travel to Yemen to negotiate "blood money," a form of compensation paid by the offender or their kin to the victim's family, as a means to save her daughter from execution. The petitioner emphasized in court the urgency of negotiating with the victim's family to save Priya's life.

The 'Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council' had approached the HC last year, seeking direction to the Centre to "facilitate diplomatic interventions as well as negotiations with the family of the victim on behalf of Nimisha Priya to save her life by paying blood money in accordance with the law of the land in a time-bound manner". The court then declined to direct negotiations but advised pursuing legal remedies against the conviction.

In a previous petition, it was alleged that Mahdi had forged documents to falsely claim marriage to Priya, subjecting her to abuse and torture.

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News Network
November 18,2023

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A far-right member of Israel’s legislature has called for burning down the Gaza Strip and blocking humanitarian aid to the besieged area amid the occupying regime’s brutal onslaught on the coastal silver, which has so far claimed more than 12,000 Palestinian lives.

Nissim Vaturi, deputy speaker of the Knesset and a member of the legislature's foreign affairs and security committee, made the call on Friday and said Tel Aviv must hold off on providing Gaza with relief aid until the more than 200 Israelis captured by Palestinian resistance movement Hamas are released.

Vaturi claimed that the Israeli regime has been “too humane” after the extremist cabinet of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu — under the international community’s pressure — approved the entry of two trucks of fuel per day into Gaza.

The fuel delivery was ordered to prevent the collapse of the war-ravaged city’s sewage treatment system, which risked a mass outbreak of viral diseases, as the besieged area is already beset by power outages and telecommunication disruptions.

“All of this preoccupation with whether or not there is internet in Gaza shows that we have learned nothing. We are too humane. Burn Gaza now, nothing less!” Vaturi wrote in a post on his X social media account.

“Don’t allow fuel in, don’t allow water in until the hostages are returned back!” he adds.

The Egyptian Red Crescent said 15 tons of diesel entered Gaza through the Rafah crossing from Egypt on Friday after the United Nations had warned of widespread starvation in the wake of intermittent shutdowns in internet and telephone services across the strip over the lack of fuel.

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