AMMAN: The death toll from a cholera outbreak is approaching 1,000 in Yemen, a war-devastated and impoverished country where “humanity is losing out to politics,” a senior UN official said Thursday.
“Time is running out to save people who are being killed or being starved and now you have cholera as well adding to that complication,” said Jamie McGoldrick, UN humanitarian coordinator in Yemen.
“We are struggling because of the lack of resources. We need some action immediately,” he said at a press briefing in the Jordanian capital.
McGoldrick gave updated figures of more than 130,000 suspected cases of cholera and over 970 deaths, with women and children accounting for half of the numbers.
“What is heartbreaking in Yemen is that humanity is losing out to the politics,” said McGoldrick.
He said a $2.1 billion humanitarian response plan for Yemen for 2017 had only been 29 percent funded.
Yemen cholera toll nears 1,000 as ‘humanity loses out to politics’
Yemen cholera toll nears 1,000 as ‘humanity loses out to politics’
Iran, UK foreign ministers in rare direct contact
- A UK government source said Cooper “emphasized the need for a diplomatic solution on Iran’s nuclear program and raised a number of other issues”
TEHRAN: Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has spoken by phone with his British counterpart Yvette Cooper, an Iranian foreign ministry statement said on Saturday, in a rare case of direct contact between the two countries.
The ministry said that in Friday’s call the ministers “stressed the need to continue consultations at various levels to strengthen mutual understanding and pursue issues of mutual interest.”
A UK government source said Cooper “emphasized the need for a diplomatic solution on Iran’s nuclear program and raised a number of other issues.”
The source in London said Cooper raised the case of Lindsay and Craig Foreman, a British couple detained in Iran for nearly a year on suspicion of espionage.
The Iranian ministry statement did not mention the case of the two Britons.
It said Araghchi criticized “the irresponsible approach of the three European countries toward the Iranian nuclear issue,” referring to Britain, France and Germany.
The three countries at the end of September initiated the
reinstatement of UN sanctions against Iran because of its nuclear program.
The Foremans, both in their early fifties, were seized in January as they passed through Kerman, in central Iran, while on a round-the-world motorbike trip.
Iran accuses the couple of entering the country pretending to be tourists so as to gather information for foreign intelligence services, an allegation the couple’s family rejects.
Before Friday’s call, the last exchange between the two ministers was in October.
