Tag Archives: Yemen

MSF says closing most cholera centers in Yemen as epidemic wanes

MSF says closing most cholera centers in Yemen as epidemic wanes

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) is closing most of its 37 cholera treatment centers in Yemen, saying the epidemic appears to have peaked.

Some 884,368 suspected cholera cases have been recorded in the war-torn country in the past six months, including 2,184 deaths, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization (WHO). The case fatality rate is now 0.25 percent.

“The number of cholera cases reported in MSF treatment centers has significantly decreased since the peak of the outbreak. As a result, the medical organization is closing the majority of its cholera treatment centers or reducing their capacity,” MSF said in a statement late on Monday.

Some 567 new patients sought treatment for suspected cholera at MSF’s centers in nine governorates of Yemen during the second week of October, down from 11,139 at the peak in the third week in June, it said.

“Only 9 percent of patients admitted by MSF last week needed to be hospitalized and a limited number of patients have symptoms that correspond with the cholera case definition (acute watery diarrhea with or without vomiting),” it said. “The remaining cases are believed to be due to other pathogens.”

Ghassan Abou Chaar, MSF head of mission in Yemen, said: “The cholera outbreak is not over but it is no longer our medical priority in Yemen. However, this should not eclipse the dire health situation of millions of Yemenis who are unable to access basic primary healthcare.”

Civil war in Yemen has killed more than 10,000 people since it began in March 2015. Yemen’s war pits the armed Houthi movement that controls the capital against the internationally-recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, which is backed by a Saudi-led coalition that has launched thousands of air strikes to restore him to power.

Cholera epidemics usually subside once the disease passes through a population, but aid agencies say the Yemen epidemic lasted longer and spread wider than they initially expected because of the war’s toll on health care.

U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said on Sunday that an aid effort by the World Health Organization, United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF, the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) and other agencies had managed to “largely contain the devastating cholera epidemic”, but warned it could flare up again without urgent investment in health, water and sanitation.

ICRC said last month that the humanitarian situation in Yemen is a “catastrophe”, and cholera cases could reach a million by the end of the year.

Alexandre Faite, head of the ICRC delegation in Yemen, said at the time that the “health sector is really on its knees in Yemen … the health staff is on its knees as well because they are not paid.”

“Preventable illnesses and deaths are increasing in Yemen, and this can be partly attributed to the salary crisis,” MSF said, noting that doctors, nurses and other public health workers had not been paid in 13 months.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Peter Graff)

Recovering from severe malnutrition in Yemen

Recovering from severe malnutrition in Yemen

By Abduljabbar Zeyad

HODEIDAH, Yemen (Reuters) – Smiling and sitting down to bread and milk with her family, Yemeni teenager Saida Ahmed Baghili is barely recognizable a year on from the photo of her emaciated frame that came to symbolize the country’s humanitarian crisis.

Baghili now weighs 36kg (80 lb), according to her father, more than triple the 11kg she weighed last October when Reuters first met her at the al-Thawra hospital in Sana’a, where she was undergoing treatment for severe malnutrition.

There the 19-year-old was unable to talk, let alone carry her ghostly, skeletal frame, which is now stronger after weeks of specialist care and time at home.

“Saida’s body got better because she’s eating better, but she’s still having trouble swallowing,” her father Ahmed Baghili said at their home in Hodeidah this month.

“She can only eat milk, biscuits and juice.”

Baghili’s plight reflects that of many families in the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country, where a two-and-a-half-year war between a Saudi-led Arab coalition and the Iran-allied Houthi movement has claimed 10,000 lives.

A quarter of the 28 million population are starving, according to the United Nations, with half a million children under the age of 5 severely malnourished and at least 2,135 people killed by cholera.

Ahmed Baghili is only able to supply the basics for his family of 10, who live in a parched village on the Red Sea coast.

Saida, whose illness began before the war, is able to help her father tend to a farmer’s cattle in exchange for milk, with their income boosted by Ahmed making deliveries on his motorcycle and donations from humanitarian organizations.

However, he says he doesn’t have enough money to send Saida for further treatment and still fears for her health. Her last appointment with a doctor was in December.

“We’re worried she might relapse and then we wouldn’t be able to do anything because we have nothing. We don’t have the transportation fee, we don’t have the fee for anything,” he said.

Click on http://reut.rs/2gxeJkK to see a related photo essay

(Writing by Patrick Johnston in LONDON; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Cholera claims unborn children as epidemic spreads Yemen misery

Children wait to be treated at a cholera treatment center in Sanaa, Yemen May 15, 2017. Picture taken May 15, 2017.

By Abduljabbar Zeyad

HODEIDAH, Yemen (Reuters) – One of the latest victims of the cholera epidemic that has killed more than 2,000 people in Yemen had yet to even take her first breath.

Her mother Safaa Issa Kaheel, then nine months pregnant, was brought into a crowded clinic in the Western port city of Hodeidah by her husband, who had to borrow the travel fare from a neighbor. “My stomach started hurting more and more,” said Kaheel, 37, a hydrating drip hooked into her arm.

Once there, she was referred by nurse Hayam al-Shamaa for an ultrasound scan which showed her baby had died of dehydration – one of 15 to perish in the womb due to cholera in September and October, according to doctors at the city’s Thawra hospital.

“I felt like death,” Kaheel said, her voice strained. “Thank god I survived the (delivery), but my diarrhea hasn’t stopped.”

The Red Cross has warned that cholera, a diarrheal disease that has been eradicated in most developed countries, could infect a million people in Yemen by the end of the year.

Two and a half years of war have sapped Yemen of the money and medical facilities it needs to battle the contagion, to which aid agencies and medics say the poor, the starving, the pregnant and the young are most vulnerable.

The cholera ward is full of children – some writhing in agony, others eerily still. The blanket over one boy too weak to move rises and falls with his shallow breathing.

Save the Children said in August that children under 15 represent nearly half of new cases and a third of deaths, with malnourished children more than six times more likely to die of cholera than well-fed ones.

Millions of Yemenis are struggling to find food and the baking desert plains around Hodeidah are hotspots both of hunger and sickness.

Yemen’s war pits the armed Houthi movement against the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, which is backed by a Saudi-led coalition that has launched thousands of air strikes to restore him to power.

At least 10,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

The country’s health sector has been badly battered while a struggle over the central bank has left public sector salaries for doctors and sanitation workers unpaid.

Soumaya Beltifa, spokesperson for the Red Cross in Sanaa, warned that a lack of funds and health personnel were blunting efforts to eradicate the disease, making it unlikely Yemen would be healthy again soon.

“The cholera epidemic has become a norm, leading to complacency in dealing with the disease, not only by civilians but also from the various (aid) organizations,” she warned.

 

Yemen cholera cases could hit 1 million by year-end: Red Cross

Yemen cholera cases could hit 1 million by year-end: Red Cross

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The humanitarian situation in Yemen is a “catastrophe”, and cholera cases could reach a million by the end of the year, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Friday.

Warring parties in Yemen – including the western-backed Saudi-led coalition – are all using disproportionate force, leading to “very excessive” civilian casualties, said Alexandre Faite, the head of the Red Cross delegation in Yemen.

In addition, suspected cases of cholera have reached 750,000, with 2,119 deaths, Faite said, and the Red Cross expects at least 900,000 cases by the end of the year.

“The situation has really evolved in a very dramatic way and I think that it’s nothing short of a catastrophe,” Faite told a news briefing in Geneva.

Civil war in Yemen has killed more than 10,000 people since it began in March 2015. Control of the country is split between the Iran-aligned Houthis, who control much of northern Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa. Opposed to the Houthis are a Saudi-led coalition.

With the main port of Hodeidah damaged, the Red Cross brings medical aid, including insulin, into Yemen with occasional cargo planes to Sanaa. Other goods come by land convoys from Jordan and Oman and by ship from Jordan, Oman and Dubai.

A ship from Karachi with 500 metric tonnes of rice is now due on Oct 7 in Hodeidah, the first ICRC shipment there since early February.

Faite called on all sides to open Sanaa airport to commercial flights for essential aid supplies and to make progress toward allowing the Red Cross to visit prisoners of war.

“I don’t think political settlement is coming soon and I’m very worried that the extension of the conflict would lead to more problems,” Faite said.

“This is why humanitarian aid, access of essential goods should be there,” he said. “There is a bottleneck”.

Although the death rate for cholera victims has dropped to less than 0.3 percent, Faite said Yemen’s “health sector is really on its knees in Yemen … the health staff is on its knees as well because they are not paid.”

For the first time, the Red Cross is now providing health workers with food parcels, he said.

“In terms of access to even water, electricity, there isn’t a power grid in the main cities in Yemen. Without the ICRC and other organizations fixing (pumping stations) there wouldn’t be any running water in Sanaa,” he said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by John Stonestreet)

Trump slaps travel restrictions on North Korea, Venezuela in sweeping new ban

International passengers wait for their rides outside the international arrivals exit at Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, U.S. September 24, 2017.

By Jeff Mason and Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Sunday slapped new travel restrictions on citizens from North Korea, Venezuela and Chad, expanding to eight the list of countries covered by his original travel bans that have been derided by critics and challenged in court.

Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia were left on the list of affected countries in a new proclamation issued by the president. Restrictions on citizens from Sudan were lifted.

The measures help fulfill a campaign promise Trump made to tighten U.S. immigration procedures and align with his “America First” foreign policy vision. Unlike the president’s original bans, which had time limits, this one is open-ended.

“Making America Safe is my number one priority. We will not admit those into our country we cannot safely vet,” the president said in a tweet shortly after the proclamation was released.

Iraqi citizens will not be subject to travel prohibitions but will face enhanced scrutiny or vetting.

The current ban, enacted in March, was set to expire on Sunday evening. The new restrictions are slated to take effect on Oct. 18 and resulted from a review after Trump’s original travel bans sparked international outrage and legal challenges.

The addition of North Korea and Venezuela broadens the restrictions from the original, mostly Muslim-majority list.

An administration official, briefing reporters on a conference call, acknowledged that the number of North Koreans now traveling to the United States was very low.

Rights group Amnesty International USA condemned the measures.

“Just because the original ban was especially outrageous does not mean we should stand for yet another version of government-sanctioned discrimination,” it said in a statement.

“It is senseless and cruel to ban whole nationalities of people who are often fleeing the very same violence that the U.S. government wishes to keep out. This must not be normalized.”

The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement the addition of North Korea and Venezuela “doesn’t obfuscate the real fact that the administration’s order is still a Muslim ban.”

The White House portrayed the restrictions as consequences for countries that did not meet new requirements for vetting of immigrants and issuing of visas. Those requirements were shared in July with foreign governments, which had 50 days to make improvements if needed, the White House said.

A number of countries made improvements by enhancing the security of travel documents or the reporting of passports that were lost or stolen. Others did not, sparking the restrictions.

The announcement came as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments on Oct. 10 over the legality of Trump’s previous travel ban, including whether it discriminated against Muslims.

 

NORTH KOREA, VENEZUELA ADDED

Trump has threatened to “destroy” North Korea if it attacks the United States or its allies. Pyongyang earlier this month conducted its most powerful nuclear bomb test. The president has also directed harsh criticism at Venezuela, once hinting at

a potential military option to deal with Caracas.

But the officials described the addition of the two countries to Trump’s travel restrictions as the result of a purely objective review.

In the case of North Korea, where the suspension was sweeping and applied to both immigrants and non-immigrants, officials said it was hard for the United States to validate the identity of someone coming from North Korea or to find out if that person was a threat.

“North Korea, quite bluntly, does not cooperate whatsoever,” one official said.

The restrictions on Venezuela focused on Socialist government officials that the Trump administration blamed for the country’s slide into economic disarray, including officials from the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service and their immediate families.

Trump received a set of policy recommendations on Friday from acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke and was briefed on the matter by other administration officials, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a White House aide said.

The rollout on Sunday was decidedly more organized than Trump’s first stab at a travel ban, which was unveiled with little warning and sparked protests at airports worldwide.

Earlier on Sunday, Trump told reporters about the ban: “The tougher, the better.”

Rather than a total ban on entry to the United States, the proposed restrictions differ by nation, based on cooperation with American security mandates, the threat the United States believes each country presents and other variables, officials said.

Somalis, for example, are barred from entering the United States as immigrants and subjected to greater screening for visits.

After the Sept. 15 bombing attack on a London train, Trump wrote on Twitter that the new ban “should be far larger, tougher and more specific – but stupidly, that would not be politically correct.”

The expiring ban blocked entry into the United States by people from the six countries for 90 days and locked out most aspiring refugees for 120 days to give Trump’s administration time to conduct a worldwide review of U.S. vetting procedures for foreign visitors.

Critics have accused the Republican president of discriminating against Muslims in violation of constitutional guarantees of religious liberty and equal protection under the law, breaking existing U.S. immigration law and stoking religious hatred.

Some federal courts blocked the ban, but the U.S. Supreme Court allowed it to take effect in June with some restrictions.

 

(Additional reporting by James Oliphant, Yeganeh Torbati, and Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Peter Cooney)

 

Iran sends pilgrims back to haj in test for broader dialogue

Iranian pilgrims wait at the Imam Khomeini airport in Tehran as they depart for the annual haj pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, in Tehran, Iran, July 31, 2017.

By Mahmoud Mourad and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

MECCA/LONDON (Reuters) – Iranian pilgrims returned to haj this year for the first time since a deadly crush in 2015, in what could be an important confidence-building measure for dialogue on other thorny issues between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Nearly 800 people were killed, according to Riyadh, when two large groups of pilgrims arrived at a crossroads east of Mecca. Counts by countries of repatriated bodies showed over 2,000 people may have died, including more than 400 Iranians.

Iran’s Supreme Leader has said his people would never forget that “catastrophe”, but President Hassan Rouhani suggested a trouble-free haj this year could help build confidence in other areas of dispute between the arch-rivals.

So far, Iranian pilgrims say they are satisfied.

“To be honest, the Saudis are doing a great job, working hard to deliver the best service,” said Pir-Hossein Kolivand, head of Iran’s Emergency Medical Services.

“The 2015 incident happened because of mismanagement, but Saudis seem to have fixed that,” he told Reuters in a phone interview from Mecca.

Iranian pilgrims participated without incident in the symbolic stoning of the devil on Friday, the riskiest part of the haj because of the large crowds involved, an Iranian journalist accompanying them said.

All told, more than 2.3 million pilgrims are participating in the five-day ritual, a religious duty once in a lifetime for every able-bodied Muslim who can afford the journey.

Rouhani said Tehran had sent pilgrims to haj based on Saudi promises of safety. He said he still lacked confidence in Riyadh but hoped it would build goodwill.

Iranian pilgrims arrive for the annual haj pilgrimage, in Arafat outside the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia August 30, 2017. Picture taken August 30, 2017.

Iranian pilgrims arrive for the annual haj pilgrimage, in Arafat outside the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia August 30, 2017. Picture taken August 30, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

“If our pilgrims come back satisfied, and if Saudi Arabia’s behavior is within religious and international frameworks, I think the situation would be more convenient to resolve the issues,” he was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA.

Relations between Shi’ite-led Iran and Sunni power Saudi Arabia are at their worst in years, with each accusing the other of subverting regional security and supporting opposite sides in conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran in January 2016 after a prominent Saudi Shi’ite cleric was executed, prompting Riyadh to close the embassy.

Saudi Arabia and several other Arab governments severed ties with Qatar in June, citing its support for Iran as one of the main reasons. Iran accused Saudi Arabia of being behind deadly attacks in Tehran claimed by Islamic State, something Riyadh denied.

 

ID BRACELETS

Until now, no Saudi report on the 2015 crush has been published, and the bodies of dozens of Iranian victims remain unidentified.

Family members of 11 Iranians whose bodies are still missing are traveling to Mecca later this year for DNA tests, an Iranian official said.

This year, Iran issued its nearly 90,000 pilgrims blue electronic bracelets to help organizers trace and identify them.

An Iranian pilgrim shows bracelet on his hand during the annual haj pilgrimage, in Arafat outside the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia August 30,

An Iranian pilgrim shows bracelet on his hand during the annual haj pilgrimage, in Arafat outside the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia August 30, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

Dozens of Iranians clad in traditional white clothes and a distinctive red mark arrived in orange buses on Thursday at their encampment in Mount Arafat.

Pilgrims who spoke with Reuters, many with previous experience at the haj, say their facilities and treatment by the Saudi authorities are better than in past years and include air conditioned tents.

“The way that security handled the Iranian pilgrims until now has been good,” said Samir Shuahni, an Iranian journalist with the delegation.

“This is what I’ve noticed for the nearly month that I’ve been in Mecca and Medina: there is good cooperation and the pilgrims are moving freely.”

Iranians said the Saudi authorities had asked them not to hold a traditional Shi’ite prayer in an open space in Medina, citing it as a potential target for Islamic State militants.

Such restrictions have not troubled Iranians still in shock from the IS attack in Tehran which killed at least 18 people.

“I think that is reasonable,” said Mahdi Hadibeh, an Iranian photographer in Mecca. “Iranians are holding the ceremonies separately in their hotels.”

 

 

(Writing by Stephen Kalin; editing by Ralph Boulton)

 

Blasphemy laws on the books in one-third of nations: study

Protesters hold placards condemning the killing of university student Mashal Khan, after he was accused of blasphemy, during a protest in Islamabad, Pakistan April 18, 2017

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Laws prohibiting blasphemy are “astonishingly widespread” worldwide, with many laying down disproportionate punishments ranging from prison sentences to lashings or the death penalty, the lead author of a report on blasphemy said.

Iran, Pakistan, and Yemen score worst, topping a list of 71 countries with laws criminalizing views deemed blasphemous, found in all regions, according to a comprehensive report issued this month by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

The bipartisan U.S. federal commission called for repeal of blasphemy statutes, saying they invited abuse and failed to protect freedoms of religion and expression.

“We found key patterns. All deviate from freedom of speech principles in some way, all have a vague formulation, with different interpretations,” Joelle Fiss, the Swiss-based lead author of the report told Reuters.

The ranking is based on how a state’s ban on blasphemy or criminalizing of it contravenes international law principles.

Ireland and Spain had the “best scores”, as their laws order a fine, according to the report which said many European states have blasphemy laws that are rarely invoked.

Some 86 percent of states with blasphemy laws prescribe imprisonment for convicted offenders, it said.

Proportionality of punishment was a key criteria for the researchers.

“That is why Iran and Pakistan are the two highest countries because they explicitly have the death penalty in their law,” Fiss said, referring to their laws which enforce the death penalty for insulting the Prophet Mohammad.

Blasphemy laws can be misused by authorities to repress minorities, the report said, citing Pakistan and Egypt, and can serve as a pretext for religious extremists to foment hate.

Recent high-profile blasphemy cases include Jakarta’s former Christian governor being sentenced to two years in jail in May for insulting Islam, a ruling which activists and U.N. experts condemned as unfair and politicized. Critics fear the ruling will embolden hardline Islamist forces to challenge secularism in Indonesia.

A Pakistani court sentenced a man to death last month who allegedly committed blasphemy on Facebook, the first time the penalty was given for that crime on social media in Muslim-majority Pakistan.

“Each of the top five countries with the highest scoring laws has an official state religion,” the report said, referring to Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Somali and Qatar. All have Islam as their state religion.

Saudi Arabia, where flogging and amputations have been reported for alleged blasphemy, is not among the top “highest-risk countries”, but only 12th, as punishment is not defined in the blasphemy law itself.

“They don’t have a written penal law, but rely on judges’ interpretation of the Sharia. The score was disproportionately low,” Fiss said. “If a law is very vague, it means prosecutors and judges have a lot of discretion to interpret.”

 

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Toby Chopra)

 

Yemen air strike kills 12, including six children, witnesses say

People carry the body of a woman they recovered from under the rubble of a house destroyed by a Saudi-led air strike in Sanaa, Yemen August 25, 2017. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

DUBAI (Reuters) – An air raid struck a building in Yemen’s capital on Friday, killing 12 people, six of them children, when an adjacent apartment block collapsed, residents said.

Residents and rescuers dug frantically through debris after the attack on the Faj Attan area of Sanaa, retrieving the bloodied, dust-covered bodies of several children, some of whom appeared to be less than 10 years old.

Chunks of masonry lay strewn beside gaping fissures in walls that revealed the apartments’ shattered interiors.

People at the scene told Reuters the warplanes were from a Saudi-led Arab coalition, which has been fighting the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in a war that has lasted more than two years and killed at least 10,000 people.

“The air force of the countries of the American-Saudi aggression carried out a hideous massacre against the citizens in Faj Attan,” an official Houthi movement website said.

Residents said the strike did not target the apartment house where people were killed, but instead hit a vacant building next to it. The apartment house contained eight flats and appeared to have wooden ceilings, a witness said.

The buildings are in the vicinity of a military base housing missiles that has been a frequent target of air raids since the war began in 2015.

The Houthis and their ally, former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, control much of the north of the country, including Sanaa. Yemen’s internationally recognized government is backed by the Saudi-led military alliance and is based in the south.

The United States and Britain provide arms and logistical assistance to the alliance for its campaign. The issue has caused controversy in Britain over the toll on civilians.

In addition to striking military targets, air strikes have hit hospitals, infrastructure and port facilities, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis.

The United Nations human rights office called on Friday for an independent investigation into air strikes by the coalition on a hotel near Sanaa on Wednesday. Those attacks killed more than 30 people.

The hotel was a guest house usually used by farm workers, said William Spindler, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR. Among those killed were five people displaced from elsewhere in Yemen, he said.

The coalition said that its review of Wednesday’s attack showed that those killed at the hotel were Houthi fighters, not civilians.

Some two million people have been displaced by the war, according to the UN.

“We remind all parties to the conflict, including the Coalition, of their duty to ensure full respect for international humanitarian law,” U.N. human rights spokeswoman Liz Throssell said.

In the week to Thursday Aug. 24, 58 civilians were killed in Yemen, “including 42 by the Saudi-led coalition,” with the rest attributed to unknown armed men and to the Popular Committees affiliated with the Houthi rebels, she said.

There was no immediate word from the coalition on Friday’s raid.

(Reporting by Reuters, additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva,; Writing by Reem Shamseddine and William Maclean; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Larry King)

Pace of airstrikes, clashes in Yemen sharply higher in 2017: report

People gather at the site of a Saudi-led air strike on an outskirt of the northwestern city of Saada, Yemen August 4, 2017. REUTERS/Naif Rahma

By Sami Aboudi

DUBAI (Reuters) – Yemen suffered more airstrikes in the first half of this year than in the whole of 2016, increasing the number of civilian deaths and forcing more people to flee their homes, according to a report by international aid agencies.

The pace of clashes on the ground has also intensified this year, especially around Yemen’s third largest city, Taiz, which is besieged by the Iran-aligned Houthis, said the report.

The number of airstrikes in the first six months of 2017 totaled 5,676, according to the report by the Protection Cluster in Yemen, which is led by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), up from 3,936 for all 2016.

Average monthly clashes between the warring sides have increased by 56 percent from last year, the figures also showed.

“(We are concerned by) the increasing impact on the civilian population, particularly in terms of civilian casualties, fresh displacement and deteriorating conditions,” said Shabia Mantoo, UNHCR spokesperson for Yemen.

Yemen’s nearly 30-month-old civil war pits President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s Saudi-backed government, which controls south and eastern Yemen, against the Houthis, who control the more populated north and eastern parts of the country.

The conflict shows no sign of ending and U.N.-sponsored peace efforts remain deadlocked.

The report did not identify any party as being responsible for the airstrikes, but the Saudi-led coalition backing Hadi has controlled Yemeni airspace since the war began in March 2015.

U.S. forces have also conducted occasional airstrikes or raids using drones.

A coalition spokesman declined to comment on the report.

CIVILIAN CASUALTIES

Most clashes and air strikes have been concentrated in frontline provinces, including Taiz, Saada, Hajjah, Sanaa, al-Jawf and Marib, the report said.

The United Nations has put the death toll since the war began in March 2015 at more than 10,000.

Figures released in a periodic update issued in August by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), with input from other aid agencies in Yemen, estimated the civilian death toll as of April 2017 at 8,053, with more than 45,000 injured, but the real figures could be much higher.

“(The figures are considered) to significantly undercount the true extent of the casualties, considering the diminished reporting capacity at health facilities and people’s difficulties accessing healthcare,” the OCHA said.

The war has destroyed much Yemeni infrastructure, including the main Hodeidah port, as well as hospitals, schools and roads, pushing the country to the verge of famine and causing a cholera epidemic that has killed some 2,000 people since April.

The number of displaced people stands at two million, while 946,000 people are internally displaced returnees, so more than 10 percent of Yemen’s 27 million population are either displaced or facing the immediate challenges of return, the OCHA said.

“Ongoing hostilities in Yemen, compounded by cholera and widespread food insecurity, continue to increase the humanitarian needs of an already vulnerable population,” said UNHCR’s Mantoo.

(Reporting by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Trump administration moves to make tougher U.S. visa vetting permanent

A sign warns of surveillance at the International Arrival area at Logan Airport in Boston.

By Yeganeh Torbati

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration moved on Thursday to make permanent a new questionnaire that asks some U.S. visa applicants to provide their social media handles and detailed biographical and travel history, according to a public notice.

The questionnaire was rolled out in May as part of an effort to tighten vetting of would-be visitors to the United States, and asks for all prior passport numbers, five years’ worth of social media handles, email addresses and phone numbers and 15 years of biographical information including addresses, employment and travel history. (See: http://bit.ly/2v0qsR2)

A State Department official declined to provide data on how many times the form had been used or which nationalities had been asked to fill it out since May, only stating that it estimates 65,000 visa applicants per year “will present a threat profile” that warrants the extra screening.

President Donald Trump ran for office in 2016 pledging to crack down on illegal immigration for security reasons, and has called for “extreme vetting” of foreigners entering the United States. On Wednesday, he threw his support behind a bill that would cut legal immigration to the United States by 50 percent over 10 years.

The Office of Management and Budget, which must approve most new federal requests of information from the public, initially approved the form on an “emergency” basis, which allowed its use for six months rather than the usual three years.

The State Department published a notice in the Federal Register on Thursday seeking to use the form for the next three years. The public has 60 days to comment on the request.

The questions are meant to “more rigorously evaluate applicants for terrorism, national security-related, or other visa ineligibilities,” the notice said.

While the questions are voluntary, the form says failure to provide the information may delay or prevent the processing of a visa application.

Trump ordered a temporary travel ban in March on citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. After months of legal wrangling, the Supreme Court in June allowed the travel ban to go forward with a limited scope.

The form does not target any particular nationality.

Seyed Ali Sepehr, who runs an immigration consultancy in California serving Iranian clients applying for U.S. visas, said that since late June, all of his clients who have been referred for extra security checks have also been asked to fill out the new form.

Kiyanoush Razaghi, an immigration attorney based in Maryland, said he knows of Iraqis, Libyans and Iranians who have been asked to fill out the form.

Immigration attorney Steve Pattison said one of his clients, who is not from one of the six travel ban countries, had been asked to fill out the new form when applying for a visitor visa, indicating that consular officers are using it broadly.

“It could be that everyone is missing another consequence of the use of the form – its deployment in a far wider sense to cover all sorts of individuals,” Pattison said.

 

(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; editing by Sue Horton and Grant McCool)