BEIRUT: Lebanon on Sunday reported 166 coronavirus cases, its highest daily infection toll since the country’s outbreak began in February.
The new figures announced by the health ministry bring the total number of infections to 2,334 including 36 deaths, according to figures carried by the state-run National News Agency (NNA).
New cases have leapt since Friday, with over 300 registered in three days, after daily numbers had appeared to be stabilising in recent weeks.
The Lebanese Red Cross said on Twitter that its teams were transporting 131 company employees who had tested positive to a quarantine center.
Health Minister Hamad Hassan said those cases were among the 166 announced Sunday, and that the figure represented a “peak.”
But he appeared to play down the spike, saying the latest infections were from a “known source” and telling local media that the chances of further transmissions existed but were “not big.”
Lebanon had started to gradually lift lockdown measures since the end of April and opened its airport to commercial flights at the start of this month, after a more than three-month closure.
In May, the government ordered a four-day return to lockdown after an uptick in new cases.
The pandemic arrived with Lebanon already mired in its worst-ever economic crisis, marked by an unprecedented plunge in the currency and with nearly half of the population in poverty.
Lebanon daily coronavirus cases spike
https://arab.news/rtu5r
Lebanon daily coronavirus cases spike
- New cases have leapt since Friday, with over 300 registered in three days
- The Lebanese Red Cross said on Twitter that its teams were transporting 131 company employees who had tested positive to a quarantine center
UN rights chief shocked by ‘unbearable’ Darfur atrocities
- Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur
PORT SUDAN: Nearly three years of war have put the Sudanese people through “hell,” the UN’s rights chief said on Sunday, blasting the vast sums spent on advanced weaponry at the expense of humanitarian aid and the recruitment of child soldiers.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that has left tens of thousands of people dead and around 11 million displaced.
Speaking in Port Sudan during his first wartime visit, UN Human Rights commissioner Volker Turk said the population had endured “horror and hell,” calling it “despicable” that funds that “should be used to alleviate the suffering of the population” are instead spent on advanced weapons, particularly drones.
More than 21 million people are facing acute food insecurity, and two-thirds of Sudan’s population is in urgent need of humanitarian aid, according to the UN.
In addition to the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis, Sudan is also facing “the increasing militarization of society by all parties to the conflict, including through the arming of civilians and recruitment and use of children,” Turk added.
He said he had heard testimony of “unbearable” atrocities from survivors of attacks in Darfur, and warned of similar crimes unfolding in the Kordofan region — the current epicenter of the fighting.
Testimony of these atrocities must be heard by “the commanders of this conflict and those who are arming, funding and profiting from this war,” he said.
Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur.
“We must ensure that the perpetrators of these horrific violations face justice regardless of the affiliation,” Turk said on Sunday, adding that repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure could constitute “war crimes.”
He called on both sides to “cease intolerable attacks against civilian objects that are indispensable to the civilian population, including markets, health facilities, schools and shelters.”
Turk again warned on Sunday that crimes similar to those seen in El-Fasher could recur in volatile Kordofan, where the RSF has advanced, besieging and attacking several key cities.
Hundreds of thousands face starvation across the region, where more than 65,000 people have been displaced since October, according to the latest UN figures.
