SHARYA: Hundreds of Yazidi families driven from their hometown of Sinjar in northern Iraq years ago are now returning as the impact of coronavirus lockdown measures makes their lives in exile even harder.
Many have lost their jobs and aid from donors in Sharya, where they have been living since they fled Sinjar in 2014.
Mahma Khalil, the mayor of Sinjar but now in exile in Dohuk in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, said more than 1,200 displaced families have returned from their temporary homes to Sinjar since June. Most had relatives their who serve in the military or police, he said.
Overrun by Daesh in 2014 and liberated by an array of forces the following year, little has been rebuilt in Sinjar.
Water is scarce and power intermittent in the city, whose former occupiers killed thousands of Yazidis and forced many women in sexual slavery.
Despite the devastation that makes the city still largely unfit for habitation, members of this ancient minority feel they have no other choice.
“The situation has become really bad,” Yazidi community leader Jameel Elias Hassan Al-Hamo said outside his makeshift home in Sharya, just south of Dohuk.
Young men from his community who used to earn up to $17 a day working at restaurants and factories can no longer find work because of the lockdown’s impact on the economy, Al-Hamo said.
As he spoke, men carried pieces of furniture, blankets and bags of food out of his home and piled them onto the back of a pickup truck.
The coronavirus outbreak has worsened Iraq’s economic crisis, pushing oil prices down in a country that depends on crude export for more than 90 percent of its revenue. Restrictions on travel and curfews have driven many out of work.
Al-Hamo’s daughter-in-law Gole Zeblo Ismaeel said that the monthly aid packages they used to depend on became scarcer as the crisis impacted the work of humanitarian organizations.
Another reason for their return was the restriction on internal travel between semi-autonomous Kurdistan and neighboring Iraqi regions, imposed since March to curb the spread of the virus.
Al-Hamo said that most Yazidi families in Sharya have a son enrolled in armed forces stationed in Sinjar, who have been unable to visit for weeks.
“Some haven’t seen their families for over three months now,” he said.
Although their hometown is destroyed, Al-Hamo said they have been promised support by local aid organizations upon their return and he believed soon he will be reunited with the rest of his family soon.
“I registered over 400 names and phone numbers of relatives, members of the tribe and of the community. They said that once we, the sheikhs and tribal leaders, go back, they will follow us,” he added.
Khalil said he has been pleading for funds from the central government to step up reconstruction efforts in Sinjar but he believed it would not happen any time soon.
Displaced Yazidis head back to Sinjar as lockdown bites
https://arab.news/6t94g
Displaced Yazidis head back to Sinjar as lockdown bites
- Young men from my community who used to earn up to $17 a day working at restaurants and factories can no longer find work because of the lockdown’s impact on the economy
Iranian strikes kill two in UAE, injure eight in Qatar as regional conflict escalates
- UAE defense ministry said Iran fired 137 missiles and 209 drones at the territory
- Qatar intercepted most of the 65 missiles and 12 drones launched by Iran, said officials
ABU DHABI: Explosions rocked cities across the Gulf on Saturday, killing two people in Abu Dhabi, while smoke and flames rose from Dubai landmark The Palm as Iran launched waves of attacks in retaliation for US and Israeli strikes.
The attacks hit airports in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Kuwait, as well as Gulf military bases and residential areas, raising fears of a wider conflict and rattling a region long seen as a haven of peace and security.
Across the UAE, Iran fired 137 missiles and 209 drones at the territory, the country’s defense ministry said, as projectiles streaked across the skies of every Gulf state but Oman, a mediator in the recent US-Iran talks.
The UAE defense ministry said most of the missiles and drones were intercepted but at Abu Dhabi’s Zayed International Airport officials said at least one person was killed and seven wounded in an “incident.”
Earlier, falling debris killed a Pakistani civilian in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates’ capital, officials said.
At Dubai International Airport four people were injured according to airport authorities and four others were also hurt at the luxury Palm development.
In Qatar, officials said Iran launched 65 missiles and 12 drones toward the Gulf state, most of which were intercepted, but eight people were injured in the salvos, with one of them in critical condition.
“We are scared of what the future is for us now, and we can’t say how the next few days are going to be,” Maha Manbaz, a nursing student in Doha told AFP.
Terrified’
Smoke poured from US bases in Abu Dhabi and Bahrain’s capital Manama, home of the American navy’s Fifth Fleet, witnesses saw.
A drone struck Kuwait’s international airport and a base housing US personnel was targeted. Three Kuwaiti soldiers and 12 other people were wounded, authorities said.
After Iran’s Revolutionary Guards reported missile strikes, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said on X that no American naval vessels were hit, damage to US facilities was minimal, and no US casualties had been reported.
Residential buildings were also targeted in Manama, with officials saying firefighters and civil defense teams had been dispatched to the scene.
“The sound of the first explosion terrified me,” said a 50-year-old retiree living near the US base in Manama’s Juffair area, where residents were quickly evacuated.
The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar warned they reserved the right to respond to the attacks.
The oil-and-gas-rich Arab monarchies, lying just across the Gulf from Iran, are long-term American allies and host a clutch of US military bases.
“The Gulf states are sandwiched between Iran and Israel, and have to bear the worst inclinations of both,” said Bader Al-Saif, an assistant professor at Kuwait University.
“Iran’s attacks on the Gulf are misplaced. They’ll only alienate its neighbors and invite further distancing from Iran,” he added.
Conflict is unusual in the Gulf, which has traded on its reputation for stability to become the Middle East’s commercial and diplomatic hub.
‘Significant damage’
The unprecedented barrage targeted Qatar’s Al Udeid base, the region’s biggest US military base, as well as Riyadh and eastern Saudi Arabia.
The UAE, Qatar and Kuwait all announced that their airspace was closed.
An AFP journalist in Qatar saw one missile destroyed in a puff of white smoke, while another in Dubai saw a volley of Patriot interceptors taking off.
Iran fired missiles at Al Udeid last June after US strikes targeted Iranian nuclear facilities during a brief war with Israel.
The escalation also saw Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed speak for the first time since a public row in late December.
The Saudi de facto ruler called the Emirati president and the pair discussed Iran’s retaliatory strikes on the Gulf and expressed solidarity and sympathy.
In Kuwait, an Iranian missile attack caused “significant damage” to the runway at an air base hosting Italian air force personnel, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani was quoted by the ANSA news agency as saying.
Late on Saturday, Kuwaiti officials said a drone targeted a naval base there with air defense forces intercepting the projectile, according to a post by the defense ministry on X.
For many residents in the Gulf, which has drawn a cosmopolitan, largely expat population, the reaction was one of shock.
“I heard the explosions, I don’t know what I felt,” a Lebanese woman living in Riyadh told AFP.
“We came to the Gulf because it’s known to be safer than Lebanon. Now I don’t know what to do or how to think really.”
