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Aid groups sound alarm in Libya as hopes fade for flood survivors

News Agency nabakhabar — Sat, 16 Sep 2023 15:12:42 +0000

Aid groups have warned of the growing risk posed by the spread of disease that could compound the humanitarian crisis in Libya, as hopes dwindled of finding more survivors days after deadly flooding.

Sunday’s flood submerged the port city of Derna, washing thousands of people and homes out to sea after two upstream dams burst under the pressure of torrential rains triggered by the hurricane-strength storm.

Conflicting death tolls have been reported, with officials in the east of the divided country giving different estimates, and one speaking of at least 3,840 dead.

In Al Bayda, 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of Derna, locals had already begun cleanup efforts, working to clear roads and homes of the mounds of mud left behind by the deluge.

Aid organizations like Islamic Relief and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) have meanwhile warned the upcoming period could see the spread of disease as well as grave difficulties in delivering aid to those most in need.

Islamic Relief warned of a “second humanitarian crisis” after the flood, pointing to the “growing risk of water-borne diseases and shortages of food, shelter and medicine”.

“Thousands of people don’t have anywhere to sleep and don’t have food,” said Salah Aboulgasem, the organization’s deputy director of partner development.

“In conditions like this, diseases can quickly spread as water systems are contaminated,” he added. “The city smells like death. Almost everyone has lost someone they know.”

MSF meanwhile said it was deploying teams to the east to assess water and sanitation.

“With this type of event we can really worry about water-related disease,” said Manoelle Carton, MSF’s medical coordinator in Derna, who described efforts to coordinate aid as “chaotic”.

However, the Red Cross and the World Health Organization pointed out that contrary to widespread belief, the bodies of victims of natural disasters rarely pose a health threat.

Appeals for aid

An AFP journalist in Derna said central neighborhoods on either side of the river, which normally dries up at this time of year, looked as if a steam roller had passed through, uprooting trees and buildings and hurling vehicles onto the port’s breakwaters.

The spokesman for the east-based rival Libyan National Army, Ahmed al Mesmari, on Friday night said the flood had affected “over 1.2 million people”.

“Everything was washed away… The waters have completely cut off the roads in these regions,” he added.

Stephanie Williams, a US diplomat and former UN envoy to Libya, urged global mobilization to coordinate aid efforts in the wake of the flood in a social media post.

The United Nations launched an appeal for more than $71 million to assist hundreds of thousands in need and warned the “extent of the problem” remains unclear.

“We don’t know the extent of the problem,” UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said Friday in Geneva, as he called for coordination between Libya’s two rival administrations — the UN-backed, internationally recognized government in Tripoli and one based in the disaster-hit east.

But the scale of the devastation gave way to shows of solidarity, as volunteers in Tripoli gathered aid for the flood victims in the east.

“Everyone in Tripoli is mobilized, and they’re bringing us goods. Tomorrow, we hope that aid will be sent to Derna,” said Mohamed Omar Benour, one of the volunteers. “We hope everything goes well, and may God help everyone.”

Teams from the Libyan Red Crescent were “still searching for possible survivors and clearing bodies from the rubble in the most damaged areas” of Derna, its spokesman Tawfik Shoukri told AFP on Friday.

Other teams were trying to deliver much-needed aid to families in the eastern part of the city, which had been spared the worst of the flooding but was cut off by road, he added.

He pointed to the “very high” level of destruction in the city but refused to give figures for the number of victims.

The International Organization for Migration meanwhile said “over 38,640” people had been left homeless in eastern Libya, 30,000 of them in Derna alone.

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Aid groups warn of ‘impending humanitarian crisis’ in Afghanistan

News Agency nabakhabar — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 18:54:25 +0000

International aid agencies have raised the alarm about an “impending humanitarian crisis” in Afghanistan, with medical charity Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) saying the country’s vulnerable healthcare system was facing a “potential collapse”.

On Monday, the United Nations appealed for almost $200m in extra funding for life-saving aid in Afghanistan after the Taliban’s takeover last month resulted in the exodus of aid workers and subsequent funding cut.

“Basic services in Afghanistan are collapsing and food and other life-saving aid is about to run out,” said OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke on Monday.

Martine Flokstra from the MSF said an already dire situation in Afghanistan’s hospitals has become worse since the Taliban’s march on Kabul on August 15 triggered a collapse of the West-backed government.

She said medics have not received salaries in months and health centers are running out of medicines amid an increase in the number of patients coming to facilities. “So potential collapse of the healthcare system is one of our major concerns,” she told Al Jazeera.

“Sirens are sounding,” Al Jazeera’s Charlotte Bellis, reporting from Kabul, said about SOS being sent out by aid agencies such as World Health Organization (WHO), MSF, Afghan Red Crescent and Red Cross.

The WHO has warned that Afghanistan was becoming increasingly desperate and that a pause in the country’s wellness projects has left millions of Afghans at risk of losing essential medical care.

“WHO has said that 90 percent of their clinics will close imminently,” Bellis said, adding that last year they treated millions of people through their 2,300 health clinics spread across the country.

Continue to provide assistance

The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said the extra sum meant a total of $606m in aid was now needed for Afghanistan until the end of the year, as the country has been cut off from the international financial institutions and its foreign reserves frozen by the US.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday that they will continue to provide assistance despite sanctions on the Taliban.

“We are determined with the international community to continue to provide the Afghans with humanitarian assistance. We can and will do that working through partners and NGOs such as the United Nations as sanctions remain in place on Afghanistan,” he said at a news conference in the Qatari capital Doha.

Al Jazeera’s Bellis said donor countries are trying to find ways to send aid through different aid agencies.

“It is a complicated picture in Afghanistan. It is a vulnerable country, but it has always relied on international aid and donors and a lot of that money isn’t coming because of sanctions on the Taliban,” she said.

UN meet over Afghan issue

The Afghan situation will be discussed next Monday at a ministerial meeting in Geneva hosted by UN chief Antonio Guterres.

The country, now under the control of the Taliban after 20 years of war, is facing a “looming humanitarian catastrophe”, Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric warned last week announcing the conference.

OCHA voiced hope that countries would pledge generously at the conference, saying $606m was needed to provide critical food and livelihood assistance to nearly 11 million people, and essential health services to 3.4 million.

The funds would also go towards treatment for acute malnutrition for more than a million children and women, water, sanitation and hygiene interventions, and protection of children and survivors of gender-based violence.

Most of the requested funds had already been asked for at the end of last year as part of a $1.3bn humanitarian appeal for Afghanistan, which remains severely underfunded.

Even before the Taliban victory, Afghanistan was heavily aid-dependent – with more than a third of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) drawn from foreign funding.

The UN has warned 18 million people are facing a humanitarian disaster, and another 18 million could quickly join them.

A full $413m of Tuesday’s appeal were unmet needs from the previous appeal, while $193m would go towards new emerging needs and changes in operating costs, OCHA said.

Call for urgent action

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) echoed similar concerns and called for urgent action.

It warned that millions of Afghans face huge humanitarian needs caused by one of the country’s worst-ever droughts, acute food shortages, a fractured health system and the spread of COVID-19.

“After living through decades of hardships, Afghans now face the ravages of a climate crisis, a global pandemic and internal displacement,” said Mohammad Nabi Burhan, acting secretary-general of Afghan Red Crescent.

“Urgent international action is needed to support millions of people with the necessities of life through the coming months and Afghanistan’s harsh winter,” he added.

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