‘Yemen is bleeding’: Minister’s plea to UN food forum

Arab News
May 11, 2018

Rome, May 11: The war in Yemen has made “the whole country bleed,” a Yemeni minister told a conference on eliminating hunger in conflict zones.

Othman Hussein Faid Mujali, Yemen’s minister of agriculture and irrigation, said the September day in 2014 when the Houthis mounted their coup was “the worst moment in our history.”

Addressing the Near East Regional Conference at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, Mujali said: “The Houthis have destroyed all that Yemen has achieved. They made the whole country bleed. Transport, services, health, education, water, electricity — all added to our indignity.”

The three-and-a-half-year conflict between Iran-backed Houthi militias and Yemen government forces had cost the country’s agriculture industry more than $10 million, the minister said.

“Crops have been deleted. There are almost no irrigation channels.”

More than 70 percent of Yemenis work in farming and the overall jobless rate is now about 40 percent. He appealed for veterinary assistance to save livestock and “pave the way for reconstruction.”

Amir Abdullah, deputy executive director of the World Food Program (WFP), said 18 million out of 29 million Yemenis lacked regular access to food and 2 million of those were badly malnourished.

“It seems impossible to lay the foundations for the future in such conditions, but that’s what we must do,” he said. “The WFP aims to bring lifesaving assistance, but it’s just a sticking plaster. It will not solve the problems of the future.”

Lebanon is not at war, but is suffering as a “spillover country,” the Lebanese minister for agriculture, Ghazi Zeaiter, told a sideline event at the conference, which he also chaired.

“Lebanon is directly affected by the war in Syria. Seven years after it started, we are hosting 1.5 million displaced Syrians, half of them children. This is on top of 34,000 Palestinians displaced from Syria and 277,000 Palestinians who were already in Lebanon,” Zeaiter said.

Housing such a large number of refugees — more than any other country — has cost Lebanon $18 billion and led to a 31 percent fall in exports. About 85 percent of the country’s agricultural exports used to go through Syria to the Gulf, but that route was now closed. The country is also spending 18 percent more of its budget on imports.

“Thirty-two percent of Lebanese now live below the poverty line and 10 percent of households are food-insecure,” said Zeaiter.

The presence of Syrian refugees has meant greater competition for jobs, and weak border controls have led to more pest infestation with open-grazing and pollution of the soil and underground water sources.

Pasquale Steduto, FAO regional program leader for the Near East and North Africa, told Arab News that countries could go to war over water unless they learn to control supplies.

“The gap between water supply and demand is widening. It is accelerating and accelerating rapidly,” he said. “Water sources in the Middle East are finite. There is cooperation over trans-boundary issues, but that can be pushed. If it’s pushed too hard, then there could be war over water.”

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News Network
November 4,2024

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Hundreds of Israeli settlers conducted a brutal attack in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.

The settlers set fire to numerous homes and vehicles of Palestinians and then moved to the main road connecting Ramallah to other cities, targeting Palestinian cars passing by.

They stormed the city of al-Bireh, near Ramallah, and burned Palestinian property and vehicles.

A woman sustained injuries after the settlers hurled stones at her vehicle, according to Palestinian news outlets.

Tension has been running high across the West Bank because of Israel’s genocidal war in the Gaza Strip, which has killed at least 43,341 people, mostly women and children, since last year’s October.

The Monday settler attack came as the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas warned of Israel’s plans to annex the West Bank and drive Palestinians out.

“We warn of the grave danger posed by the plans led by the extremist occupation regime and illegal settler groups to displace the residents of Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank,” Hamas official Mahmoud Mardawi said.

Israel's far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the full annexation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip last week.

Smotrich asserted that Israel should unequivocally declare there would be no Palestinian state.

He repeated his proposal of expanding Israeli settlements within the West Bank and other occupied territories.

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News Network
November 10,2024

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The media office in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli regime has been waging a genocidal war since last October, says as many as 188 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the onset of the brutal military onslaught.

The office provided the figure on Saturday, naming four journalists as the most recent victims of the onslaught.

It identified the foursome as Zahraa Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Ahmad Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Mustafa Khadr Bahar, and Abdel Rahman Khadr Bahar.

The office said it “strongly condemns the targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation and holds it fully responsible for committing this heinous crime.”

“We call on the international community, international organizations, and those involved in journalistic work worldwide to take action against the occupation, pursue it in international courts for its ongoing crimes, and pressure it to halt the genocide and the targeted killings of Palestinian journalists,” it said.

Earlier in the day, the office said the Israeli regime had bombed the tents sheltering journalists and displaced persons at the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza for the ninth consecutive time.

The atrocity that claimed the lives of two people and injured 26 others came as part of “the genocidal crimes committed by the Israeli occupation army against hospitals, civilians, and displaced persons,” it said.

The media office held the regime and the United States, its biggest ally, as well as other countries aiding the genocide fully responsible for such systematic crimes.

At least 43,552 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 102,765 others wounded since the launch of the war that followed a retaliatory operation by Gaza’s resistance groups.

The fatalities include 44 people, who were killed across the coastal sliver, in the most recent phase of the military onslaught.

As many as 24 of the victims were killed in the northern part of the territory, where the regime has markedly intensified its deadly attacks for weeks.

They included an eight-year-old child and a five-year-old one, who lost their lives after Israeli warplanes targeted a group of minors filling up jerry cans with water alongside their mother at the Jabalia Refugee camp.

Gaza’s heath ministry, meanwhile, said a number of victims remained under the rubble and in the streets following Israeli airstrikes, saying ambulances and civil defense teams could not reach them due to the sheer extent of the destruction caused by the raids and obstruction caused by the regime.

Also on Saturday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, a United Nations-backed assessment, warned that famine was looming in northern Gaza amid escalated Israeli aggression and the regime’s near-total siege of the targeted areas.

The alert from the Famine Review Committee warned of "an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine occurring, due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip."

On October 17, the body projected that the number of people in Gaza facing "catastrophic" food insecurity between November and April 2025 would reach 345,000, or 16 percent of the population.

The IPC report classified that figure as Phase 5 -- a situation when "starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident."

The Israeli military, however, questioned the report's credibility.

"To date, all assessments by the IPC have proven incorrect and inconsistent with the situation on the ground," the army said in a statement, denouncing "partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests."

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News Network
November 15,2024

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Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has killed or captured 69 terrorists linked to the Israeli spy agency Mossad during a major counterterrorism drill in the country's southeast, its spokesman says.  

General Ahmad Shafaei, the spokesman for the “Martyrs of Security” drill, said Friday that a total of 23 terrorists have been killed and another 46 arrested in various clean-up operations ever since the IRGC Ground Force launched it in the Sistan and Baluchestan province on November 1.

Seven terrorists have also turned themselves in during the period.

“The undeniable fact about terrorists is that they rely on arrogant powers, particularly the intelligence service of the wicked and vicious Zionist regime," Shafaei said.

“Unfortunately, weapons and munitions at terrorists’ disposal are among the most sophisticated ones in the world. This accounts for their heavy dependence.” 

The official stated that several members of the disbanded terror teams were non-Iranian nationals, who had been hired by foreign intelligence agencies to carry out acts of sabotage and terror inside Iran.

In a most recent operation, six terrorists were arrested and four others were eliminated, three of whom were non-Iranians, he added. 

On October 26, ten members of Iran's law enforcement forces were killed in a terrorist attack in the Gohar Kuh district of Taftan in the Sistan and Baluchestan province.

The so-called Jaish al-Adl terrorist group claimed responsibility for the assault, which was one of the deadliest in the province in recent months.

The group has carried out numerous terrorist attacks in Iran, primarily in Sistan and Baluchestan.

Its tactics include the abduction of border guards as well as targeting civilians and police stations within the province to incite chaos and disorder.

In January, Iran launched a military operation during which the headquarters of the Pakistan-based terrorist group was targeted in missile strikes, destroying its infrastructure.

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