Middle East: Scale of the Human Crisis Emerges by AFP / Reuters / The Guardian / UN News 11:28am 25th Jul, 2006   7 August 2006    UN aid coordinator in Lebanon deplores Israeli attacks, condemns Hizbollah.    With more than a thousand people killed in almost a month of fighting, the top United Nations aid official in Lebanon today deplored Israeli bombardment of civilian infrastructure, condemned Hizbollah’s rocket attacks and called on all sides to adhere to their commitments under international law, especially relating to access for emergency relief supplies to the hundreds of thousands who have fled their homes.    UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon, David Shearer, was especially critical of an attack at the weekend by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) that killed at least two Lebanese and was very close to a UN aid convoy near the city of Tyre, warning that such attacks, which have already curtailed vital emergency supply routes between the north and south of the country, could halt aid operations altogether.    “Attacks close to our convoys, such as yesterday’s, could very well prevent us from continuing our humanitarian relief efforts, as many truck drivers are no longer willing to risk their lives. The targeting of civilians and essential social infrastructure is a violation of international law,” he said in a statement. Four drivers did not turn up for work today.    “We deplore the continuation of Israeli bombardment of civilian infrastructure in Lebanon and call on all parties in this conflict to adhere to their obligations under international humanitarian law with regard to civilians. We also condemn the continuing rocket attacks by Hizbollah against civilians in Israel.”    IDF bombardments have destroyed four bridges on the road from the Syrian border at Aarida to Beirut, forcing the UN World Food Programme (WFP), which is responsible for transporting all UN relief supplies into and within Lebanon, to cancel convoys and also take lengthy detours, tripling the travel time between destinations, Mr. Shearer said.    Highlighting the continued problem of dwindling fuel supplies caused by the lack of access, he also said that this could cut off power supplies within a few days, effectively preventing hospitals from functioning and closing water pumping stations. That, he warned, would precipitate a “major humanitarian crisis.”    The World Health Organization (WHO) today called on all sides in the conflict to ensure safe passage of fuel, saying that if fuel is not delivered this week, 60 per cent of all hospitals in Lebanon, along with other health facilities, will have to shut down.    "Based on available information, if there is no fuel delivered in the next few days, more than half of the hospitals will not be able to operate by the end of this week and the situation will be much worse next week," warned Dr Ala Alwan, Representative of the WHO Director-General for Health Action in Crises.    Since the conflict erupted on 12 July, around 960 Lebanese, most of them civilians, have been killed, almost 3,400 have been injured, with more than 915,000 – about one quarter of Lebanon’s population – displaced, the statement said. In Israel, 95 people have been killed, 38 of them civilians, as a result of the conflict and Hizbollah rocket attacks from Lebanon to Israel.    Despite the difficulties in getting aid through to Lebanon, the UN said that three convoys have left today to Sidon, Nabatiyeh in the south and a third is coming from Aarida to Beirut, with 11 trucks for the capital carrying various humanitarian supplies from WFP, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).    Also on the humanitarian front, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) today distributed hygienic kits, diapers and other emergency supplies in Beirut’s southern suburbs and elsewhere in the country.    August 7, 2006    Humanitarian crisis worsens in Lebanon. (AFP / Reuters)    Aid agency CARE says the humanitarian situation in Lebanon is becoming increasingly desperate as Israel and Hezbollah continue to trade fire.    Hospitals in Lebanon have begun closing, every major road in the country has been damaged and more than 70 bridges have been destroyed.    The leader of a CARE assessment team working in Lebanon, Megan Chisholm, says the bombing of roads and bridges has made it difficult to bring aid supplies into Lebanon. She says the organisation is unable to reach Lebanon''s worst-affected areas.    "We won''t be able to get there until there is security, until the conflict finishes," she said. "We''re hearing stories about the desperate situation of people caught in the conflict, people who have no food left. "They''re doing everything they can to survive amidst the conflict - they''re drinking water from puddles. "People are not surviving and being left in the streets."    Ms Chisholm says conditions are grim even in the relatively safe northern part of the country. "They''re getting worse actually - every day that this conflict goes on, the situation of civilians gets worse," she said. "I''m seeing families living three families in a small room, 20 people, a small amount of food, fuel''s running out. "They''re sharing one tiny bathroom between 50 people that has a toilet and not even a shower."    Long-term problems    She says Lebanon''s civilians need an immediate cease-fire.    "We need the conflict to end so that civilians are not dying," she said. "Then people need water, they need sanitation, they need water to drink so they''re not getting diarrhoeal diseases. "They need to be able to wash, go to the toilet safely, they need food. "They need shelter and a safe place to live … and they need health care and medical supplies."    But Ms Chisholm says it will still be difficult to distribute aid once the fighting stops. "The damage to infrastructure is going to continue to cause us problems because we need to use roads, we need to use bridges and we need to be secure," she said.    "A related issue is that we also know there are a lot of unexploded ordinances, which is basically bombs that have dropped but not exploded. "They''re going to create a huge danger to humanitarian workers but also to children and to families trying to return to conflict-affected areas."    28 July 2006    UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland, has returned to UN Headquarters in New York from a six-day visit to Lebanon, northern Israel and the Gaza Strip, and briefed the Security Council on the destruction in the region.    “Civilians must be protected at any cost. If there are many more dead children in a conflict than armed men, there is something fundamentally wrong, not only with how the armed men behave and where they hide, but also with the way the response is being conducted.”    He said humanitarian workers were doing all they could to alleviate the suffering but he acknowledged that “aid in itself is not the solution,” and repeated Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s call for an immediate cessation of hostilities, followed by a ceasefire agreement, the deployment of a security force and a political settlement.    In a detailed briefing to the Council, the Health Ministry now puts the civilian death toll at more than 600, adding that “the majority are women and children.” He also outlined the “devastating impact” of the conflict on the civilian population of northern Israel, where hundreds of thousands live in constant fear caused by daily Hezbollah rocket attacks.    Mr. Egeland highlighted the “armed conflict and deepening social and economic crisis in Gaza, and the occupied Palestinian territory as a whole,” saying that 150 people have been killed – a quarter of them children – since the present conflict broke out in June.    Speaking specifically of the Israeli attack on the power plant in Gaza, he said every single transformer had been destroyed, leaving private households, hospitals and water pumps with only three to four hours of electricity supply per day, but this was often “not synchronized with the few hours during which water is being supplied.”    The World Food Programme (WFP) has also started a humanitarian cargo airlift, which will take temporary warehouses and generators to the region. But as the situation in Lebanon deteriorates, with one in five Lebanese homeless and hostilities continuing, agencies are racing against time.    “There are women and children who face a daily threat not only of shelling and injury, but of having less and less food and water to sustain them. We have no time to waste in reaching them,” warned Amer Daoudi, Emergency Coordinator for the WFP operation in Lebanon. “A greater catastrophe is in the making if we don’t assist people soon.”    Beirut. July 25, 2006    Scale of the Human Crisis Emerges, by Brian Whitaker. (The Guardian/UK)    The people of Lebanon are facing their "hour of greatest need", the UN said yesterday in launching an emergency appeal for $150m (£81m) to help an estimated 800,000 civilians whose lives have been disrupted by Israeli bombing of Lebanon.    The relief plan would focus on providing food, water, healthcare and other essential services, Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief coordinator, said.    The situation in Lebanon is "very bad, and deteriorating by the day", said Mr Egeland. On Sunday he described the bombing of south Beirut as "a violation of humanitarian law".    But last night he had harsh words for Hizbullah as well, rebuking the Shi"ite group for cravenly using civilians as human shields. "Hizbullah must stop this cowardly blending ... among women and children," Mr Egeland said.    A UN report accompanying the appeal highlighted the scale of the devastation during 12 days of warfare, saying:    · The ongoing [Israeli] military operation has caused enormous damage to residential areas and key civilian infrastructure such as power plants, seaports and fuel depots.    · Hundreds of bridges and virtually all road networks have been systematically destroyed, leaving entire communities in the south inaccessible.    · Skyrocketing prices for basic goods (eg: the price of sugar has risen by 600% and cooking gas by 400%) further deplete the coping mechanisms of the Lebanese.    · The longer the hostilities last, the more dramatic the humanitarian situation will become. Food, water, health, fuel, and other basic needs will increase; so will the number of internally displaced persons.    · Reports indicate that there is a lack of essential goods, with needs particularly acute in villages along the Israeli-Lebanese border, which have been isolated by the conflict. There are reports that food supplies in some villages have been exhausted.    · The widespread destruction of public infrastructure ... as well as the targeting of commercial trucks, has seriously hampered relief operations.    · As many as 800 persons live in a school designed for 200 to 300 children. School water systems cannot cope with the extent of needs. Neither can sanitary facilities ... a resurgence of diarrhoea cases has been noted in some centres.    In addition to this list, Mr Egeland said there was one school housing 1,000 people which had only six toilets. He warned that fuel was becoming critical in many areas and power failure would affect water supplies and sewage, bringing increased health risks. Calling for an immediate ceasefire, he said: "Only cessation of hostilities can really make it safe for us [to deliver aid]." Failing that, the UN was hoping to arrange a "notification scheme" which would allow safe passage for humanitarian goods.    The UN already had 100 trucks contracted or on their way to deliver aid within Lebanon, Mr Egeland said. The first convoy could head south from Beirut to Sidon and Tyre as early as tomorrow, and the UN was working on details with the Israeli military, he said.    The UN is asking Israel for safe passage through three Lebanese ports. Initially, it hopes to have two ships ferrying supplies into Beirut from Cyprus, with the ports of Tripoli, in the north, and Tyre, in the south, to be added later. It has also asked Israel to grant safe passage for convoys from Syria.
	Next (more recent) news item
	Next (older) news item