2-year-old is latest MERS victim

May 15, 2014

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Jeddah/Geneva, May 15: The Ministry of Health reported five deaths and 16 new cases of the MERS coronavirus, which included a two-year old infant with congenital problems in Madinah, on Wednesday.

However, the WHO said the spread of the puzzling virus doesn’t yet constitute a global health emergency. The decision was made after a meeting of WHO expert group.

“Calling a global emergency in a world which has a lot of urgent issues going on is a major act,” Dr. Keiji Fukuda, an assistant director-general of WHO, told reporters. “You have to have really solid information to say this is a global emergency.”

Fukuda said there wasn’t yet proof of the virus’ sustained transmission among people.

“People might think (WHO) is crying wolf because MERS is still primarily a problem in the Middle East,” said Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota who has worked in the Middle East. “But if one of those infected people gets on a plane and lands in London, Toronto, New York or Hong Kong and transmits to another 30 people, everyone will have a different view.”

On Wednesday, the Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and the Environment announced its first case of MERS, a man who became infected during a visit to Saudi Arabia. He is now in isolation at a hospital in The Hague.

Dr. Clemens Wendtner, who treated a German MERS patient in Munich last year, said the current spread of MERS should not set off a global alarm. He was not part of the WHO meeting.

“I do not see an international threat or a pandemic (being caused) by MERS,” he wrote in an e-mail. He said the spread of MERS to humans was still exceptional and that the disease was mostly affecting animals.

Meanwhile, a Saudi ministry official said that two of the five deaths were among the new cases, while the other three fatalities were among patients who had been previously diagnosed.

This brings the death toll to 157 since September 2012.

Two men, aged 55 and 57 who had been previously diagnosed, died in Jeddah, while the third was a 60-year-old woman in Riyadh.

The 16 new cases include 12 women, of whom nine from Riyadh, five from Jeddah and two from Madinah.

Female patients in Riyadh are aged 23, 31, 40, 41, 55, 60 and 63. Among them, the 60-year-old woman died following a heart attack after surgery, while the 63-year-old died due to chronic liver problems.

Two men, aged 71 and 72, suffer from severe diabetes, in addition to respiratory diseases.

They are still not out of danger and are being treated at the intensive care unit (ICU) of a government hospital.

Among the new cases in Jeddah were three women, aged 36, 42 and 53, while the two men are aged 43 and 57.

Four patients are in stable condition, while the 53-year-old woman developed respiratory symptoms and is currently at the ICU of a private hospital.

In Madinah, a two-year-old child with congenital anomalies who had developed respiratory symptoms has been admitted to the ICU of a government hospital.

The other patient is a 41-year-old woman who had been in contact with a confirmed virus case.

Three patients who had made a full recovery were discharged from hospitals in Jeddah and Madinah.

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News Network
October 2,2024

Yemeni Armed Forces have launched a series of attacks on Israeli military positions deep inside the occupied territories, in solidarity with Palestinian and Lebanese people amid the Tel Aviv regime’s ongoing offensives in the Gaza Strip and across Lebanon.

Delivering a televised statement broadcast live from the capital Sana’a on Wednesday morning, Yemen’s military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree said the country’s missile units had fired three domestically-developed Quds-5 cruise missiles at the strategic installations.

He added that the missiles managed to strike the designated targets precisely, despite the Zionist regime’s attempts to conceal the losses it sustained in the aftermath of the missile attack.

Saree also hailed the Islamic Republic of Iran’s retaliatory attack, dubbed Operation True Promise II, against Israel, stressing that Yemeni Armed Forces are prepared to participate in any joint military operation against the Zionist enemy in support of the Palestinian and Lebanese nations, and in response to Israeli atrocities.

“The continued US and British support for the Israeli enemy will put their interests in the region in jeopardy. Yemeni Armed Forces will not hesitate to expand their military operations against the Zionist enemy and its sponsors until the ongoing aggression against Gaza stops, the siege on the coastal territory is completely lifted, and the attacks on Lebanon come to an end,” he pointed out.

Yemenis have declared their open support for Palestine’s struggle against the Israeli occupation since the regime launched a devastating war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after the territory’s Palestinian resistance movements carried out surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity.

The Yemeni Armed Forces have said they will not stop their attacks until unrelenting Israeli ground and aerial offensives in Gaza end.

So far, Israel has killed at least 41,638 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 96,460 others in Gaza.

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News Network
September 28,2024

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A new wave of Israeli airstrikes have reportedly hit the Dahiyeh area in the south of Lebanon’s capital Beirut, which had come under deadly aerial attacks by the regime just hours earlier.

The strikes targeted several buildings in the al-Hadath and Laylaki neighborhoods in the area on Saturday.

Shortly afterwards, reports pointed to “a third wave of strikes” on al-Hadath as well as strikes against Choueifat, another southern Beirut suburb, with subsequent accounts putting the total number of the attacks at more than 30.

The Israeli military claimed that it was conducting strikes targeting “weapons belonging to Hezbollah…that were stored beneath civilian buildings” in southern Beirut.

Hezbollah's Media Relations’ Office, however, asserted, “The enemy's claims about the presence of weapons or weapons depots in the civilian buildings targeted by the bombing in the southern suburb are false.”

Simultaneous Israeli airstrikes targeted areas near the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon, including al-Bass, Burj al-Shamali, and al-Maashouq.

Also on Saturday, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon warned that the country was facing bloodshed not seen in decades, and that the crisis could deteriorate even further.

"The recent escalations in Lebanon are nothing short of catastrophic,” Imran Riza said. “We are witnessing the deadliest period in Lebanon in a generation, and many express their fear that this is just the beginning.”

On Friday, Israeli warplanes struck at least six residential structures in Dahiyeh's Haret Hreik neighborhood, killing at least eight people and wounding some 80 others.

The attacks came as part of the regime’s escalation against Lebanon that has been targeting the country since October 7, when Tel Aviv launched a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

The escalation has taken a deadlier turn since Monday, claiming the lives of more than 700 people across the country.

Hezbollah has been responding to the aggression with numerous retaliatory operations targeting the occupied Palestinian territories.

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News Network
September 28,2024

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The Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement has confirmed the assassination of its secretary general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in massive Israeli airstrikes targeting residential buildings in southern Beirut on Friday.

“His Eminence, the Master of Resistance, the righteous servant, has joined his Lord and His pleasure as a great martyr — an outstanding, courageous, wise, and insightful leader — joining the ranks of the radiant martyrs of Karbala in the divine journey of faith, following in the footsteps of the prophets and martyr imams,” Hezbollah said in a statement on Saturday afternoon.

“The leadership of Hezbollah vows to the highest, most sacred, and dearest martyr in our journey, filled with sacrifices and martyrs, to continue its struggle against the enemy, supporting Gaza and Palestine, and defending Lebanon and its steadfast, honorable people,” it added.

Since Friday afternoon, Israeli warplanes have conducted over 30 airstrikes, targeting residential buildings in Burj al-Barajneh, Kafaat, Choueifat, Hadath, al-Laylaki, and Mreijeh, with local media reporting upwards of 300 casualties as a result of the aggression.

Footage broadcast by al-Manar television channel from the crowded area of Beirut’s Dahiyeh shows flattened buildings, streets filled with rubble and clouds of smoke and dust above the area.

Martyrs’ Square, Beirut’s central public area, was crowded with exhausted and anxious families sheltering outdoors.

The recent attacks are part of the Israeli regime’s intensified assault on Lebanon, which has become more deadly this week, resulting in over 700 deaths nationwide since Monday.

The new attacks came less than a week after the Tel Aviv regime killed 38 people, including three children and seven women as well as senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil in an attack on a residential building in a southern Beirut suburb.

Earlier on Saturday, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei said the brutal attacks by the “rabid Zionist dog” on Lebanon revealed the shortsightedness and foolish policies of Israeli officials, calling on all Muslims to unite behind Lebanese people and Hezbollah.

“The Zionist criminals need to know that they are far too weak to be able to inflict any significant damage on the solid structure of Lebanon’s Hezbollah. All the resistance forces in the region stand with and support Hezbollah,” the Leader said in a statement on Saturday.

“The Lebanese have not forgotten that there was a time when the soldiers of the occupying regime were advancing toward Beirut, and Hezbollah stopped them, and made Lebanon proud. Today too, by the grace and power of God, Lebanon will make the transgressing, malicious enemy regret its actions,” Ayatollah Khamenei noted. 

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