BEIRUT: Lebanon is facing a public health crisis because of its failing waste management system with more than three-quarters of the country’s solid waste either being dumped in landfill sites and burned or buried, according to one study.
The report by the American University of Beirut said that all but 10-12 percent of the country’s waste was suitable for recycling or use as organic fertilizers, yet 77 percent of waste was sent to landfill sites or improperly buried.
Lebanon’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Health, Ghassan Hasbani, said random waste incineration, or burning, was directly affecting people’s health. He urged the Cabinet to develop a waste management plan, and said Lebanon needed to “provide treatment, as a national priority, to those harmed by the state’s failure to secure a safe environment.”
Hasbani said the country had about 940 randomly sited waste dumps, with open-air waste incineration being carried out in 150 sites every week. As a result, the risk of lung disease among nearby residents had more than doubled.
At a joint press conference with Human Rights Watch representatives at the Ministry of Health on Monday, the health minister revealed there were 1,200 lung cancer patients and 1,090 colon cancer patients in Lebanon.
Hasbani said the average cost of treating a lung cancer patient is $13,000 compared with $5,000 in 2012. He called on the government to allocate additional budgets for treating cancer patients. “It’s a human health issue,” he said.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently launched a campaign calling on the Lebanese government to introduce a national law and develop a sustainable strategy for waste management.
“Burning waste in the open air puts the residents’ health at risk,” said Lama Fakih, director of HRW in Beirut. “The absence of an effective plan for addressing waste incineration is a violation of Lebanon’s international obligations.”
Lebanon faces a renewed waste management crisis with the Costa Brava (in Beirut’s southern suburbs) and Burj Hammoud (in the city’s east) landfills expected to reach maximum capacity this year, two years earlier than government predictions. The two sites were designed to hold waste only until another solution could be found.
Bassam Khawaja, the Lebanon and Kuwait researcher in the Middle East and North Africa division at HRW, said the Lebanese people “must demand real plans and radical solutions.”
Khawaja said that “about 90 percent of Lebanon’s solid waste contains substances that can be either composted or recycled, yet only 8 percent was being recycled and 15 percent being composted. There isn’t a suitable recycling option in Beirut.”
HRW interviewed more than 100 people living in areas close to landfill sites, as well as public health experts, government officials, doctors and activists. Researchers also visited landfill sites and took photographs using drones.
Lebanon’s waste crisis ‘a threat to public health’
Lebanon’s waste crisis ‘a threat to public health’
UNRWA says food distribution in Rafah suspended due to insecurity
DUBAI: The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Tuesday that food distribution in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah were currently suspended due to lack of supplies and insecurity.
Simultaneous Israeli assaults on the southern and northern edges of the Gaza Strip this month have caused a new exodus of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, and sharply restricted the flow of aid, raising the risk of famine.
Cyprus says maritime aid shipments to Gaza ‘on track’
- 1,000 tons of aid were shipped from Cyprus to the besieged Palestinian territory between Friday and Sunday
- The vessels were shuttling between Gaza and the east Mediterranean island
NICOSIA: Four ships from the United States and France are transporting aid from Larnaca port to the Gaza Strip amid the spiralling humanitarian crisis there, the Cyprus presidency said on Tuesday.
Victor Papadopoulos from the presidential press office told state radio 1,000 tons of aid were shipped from Cyprus to the besieged Palestinian territory between Friday and Sunday.
He said the vessels were shuttling between Gaza and the east Mediterranean island, a distance of about 360 kilometers (225 miles).
Large quantities of aid from Britain, Romania, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and other countries have accumulated at Larnaca port.
Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides told reporters on Tuesday the maritime aid effort was “on track.”
“We have substantial assistance from third countries that want to contribute to this effort,” he said.
The aid shipped from Cyprus is entering Gaza via a temporary US-built floating pier, where the shipments are offloaded for distribution.
The United Nations has warned of famine as Gaza’s 2.4 million people face shortages of food, safe water, medicines and fuel amid the Israel-Hamas war that has devastated the coastal territory.
Aid deliveries by truck have slowed to a trickle since Israeli forces took control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing with Egypt in early May.
The war in Gaza broke out after Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Two days after the war broke out, Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a “complete siege” on the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 35,647 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Daesh attack in Syria kills three soldiers: war monitor
- The militants “attacked a site where... regime forces were stationed“
- The Syrian army had sent forces to the area, where Daesh attacks are common
BEIRUT: Daesh group militants killed three Syrian soldiers in an attack Tuesday on an army position in the Badia desert, a war monitor said.
The militants “attacked a site where... regime forces were stationed,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that a lieutenant colonel and two soldiers died.
The Syrian army had sent forces to the area, where Daesh attacks are common, ahead of an expected wider sweep, said the Britain-based Observatory which has a network of sources inside the country.
In an attack on May 3, Daesh fighters killed at least 15 Syrian pro-government fighters when they targeted three military positions in the desert, the Observatory had reported.
Daesh overran large swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014, proclaiming a so-called caliphate and launching a reign of terror.
It was defeated territorially in Syria in 2019, but its remnants still carry out deadly attacks, particularly against pro-government forces and Kurdish-led fighters in Badia desert.
Syria’s war has claimed more than half a million lives and displaced millions more since it erupted in March 2011 with Damascus’s brutal repression of anti-government protests.
At least 9 Egyptian women and children die when vehicle slides off ferry and plunges into Nile River
At least 9 Egyptian women and children die when vehicle slides off ferry and plunges into Nile River
- The accident, which happened in Monshat el-Kanater town in Giza province, also injured nine other passengers
CAIRO: At least nine Egyptian women and children died Tuesday when a small bus carrying about two dozen people slid off a ferry and plunged into the Nile River just outside Cairo, health authorities said.
The accident, which happened in Monshat el-Kanater town in Giza province, injured nine other passengers, the Health Ministry said in a statement. Giza is one of three provinces forming Greater Cairo.
Six of the injured were treated at the site while three others were transferred to hospitals. The ministry didn’t elaborate on their injuries.
A list of the nine dead obtained by The Associated Press showed four were minors.
Giza provincial Gov. Ahmed Rashed said the bus was retrieved from the river and rescue efforts were still underway as of midday Tuesday.
The cause of the accident was not immediately clear.
According to the state-owned Akhbar daily, about two dozen passengers, mostly women, were in the vehicle heading to work when the accident occurred. It said security forces detained the vehicle driver.
Ferry, railway and road accidents are common in Egypt, mainly because of poor maintenance and lack of regulations. In February, a ferry carrying day laborers sank in the Nile in Giza, killing at least 10 of the 15 people on board.
Syrian first lady Asma Assad has leukemia, presidency says
- Statement stated that Asma would undergo a special treatment protocol that would require her to isolate
DUBAI: Syria’s first lady, Asma Assad, has been diagnosed with leukemia, the Syrian presidency said on Tuesday, almost five years after she announced she had fully recovered from breast cancer.
The statement said Asma, 48, would undergo a special treatment protocol that would require her to isolate, and that she would step away from public engagements as a result.
In August 2019, Asma said she had fully recovered from breast cancer that she said had been discovered early.
Since Syria plunged into war in 2011, the British-born former investment banker has taken on the public role of leading charity efforts and meeting families of killed soldiers, but has also become hated by the opposition.
She runs the Syria Trust for Development, a large NGO that acts as an umbrella organization for many of the aid and development operations in Syria.
Last year, she accompanied her husband, President Bashar Assad ,on a visit to the United Arab Emirates, her first known official trip abroad with him since 2011. She met Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, the Emirati president’s mother, during a trip seen as a public signal of her growing role in public affairs.
