A deadly cholera outbreak compounds the misery of war-weary Syrians

Syria’s cholera outbreak has affected the country’s poorest people. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 03 November 2022
Follow

A deadly cholera outbreak compounds the misery of war-weary Syrians

  • WHO believes the current outbreak was caused by the public consumption of polluted water from the Euphrates
  • Syria’s health infrastructure has crumbled as a result of aid embargoes, sanctions and war damage

DUBAI/QAMISHLI, Syria: After more than 11 years of war, destruction, displacement and hunger, Syrians now face a new horror: Cholera. The disease, caused by contaminated food and water, has spread across several parts of the country in recent months and has already claimed lives.

Cholera, which has been largely eliminated in the developed world, causes diarrhea and vomiting, leading to rapid dehydration, which can kill within hours without prompt treatment. The number of cases in Syria has been steadily on the rise since the summer.

The World Health Organization recorded 24,614 infections and 81 deaths between August to the end of October, with Deir Ezzor, Raqqa, Aleppo and Hasakah witnessing the highest concentrations, while camps for the internally displaced have reported 65 cases.




A child suffering from cholera receives treatment at the Al-Kasrah hospital in Syria's eastern province of Deir Ezzor. (AFP)

Parts of Syria, especially the far-flung governorates, have been facing a water crisis since most water and sewerage infrastructure was destroyed as a result of the civil war that erupted in 2011.

WHO believes the current outbreak was likely caused by the consumption of polluted water from the Euphrates River. Drought, the overpumping of groundwater, and new dams built upstream in Turkey have reduced the once mighty river to a trickle.

Falling water levels have created swamps and stagnant pools along the riverbanks, where raw sewage and other contaminants have collected and festered — the ideal conditions for water- and mosquito-borne diseases to develop.

Jwan Mustafa, co-chair of the Health Board of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), said the first case of cholera was recorded in the region in September, spreading from Deir Ezzor to Raqqa and later to Hasakah further to the north.

“Our recent statistics based on rapid testing confirm 15,000 cases and 30 deaths,” Mustafa told Arab News. “The pollution in the Euphrates River has been the main cause of plenty of prior viruses and diseases. And now cholera.

“People in the area rely on the river to drink, water their plants and for agriculture. The area by the river is considered the breadbasket of northeast Syria. When Hasakah faces a drought, it relies on the Euphrates’ water, which spells disaster for the governorate.

“We’ve started taking measures to attempt to contain the spread of the disease. Groups have been tasked with adding chlorine to water tanks in attempt to purify them.”




Syrians in Deir Ezzor are forced to use contaminated sections of the Euphrates River for drinking water and irrigation. (AFP)

Authorities are encouraging the public in cholera hotspots to first boil their water before drinking, cooking or watering their crops, to treat water tanks, pipes and other vessels with chlorine, and to regularly wash their hands and sanitize surfaces. 

However, given Syria’s crumbling infrastructure, the flight of skilled workers abroad and shortages of basic chemicals and equipment, even these simple preventative measures are difficult to implement. 

“The deterioration of the infrastructure has greatly impacted the health sector,” said Mustafa. “We struggle to contain diseases because we lack the resources and expertise. A simple virus can very easily become an epidemic in the region. We are short on laboratories and medications.”

Syria’s health infrastructure has suffered under a devastating mix of aid embargoes, sanctions and war damage. Throughout the civil war, the regime of Bashar Assad has systematically destroyed hospitals in rebel-held areas in defiance of international humanitarian law.

FASTFACTS

• Some 29 countries have reported cholera outbreaks since January of this year.

• Afghanistan, Pakistan and Haiti are among those affected besides Syria and Lebanon.

• UNICEF urgently needs $40.5 million to expand its emergency cholera response in Syria and Lebanon alone.

• The money will support health, water, hygiene and sanitation, risk communication and community engagement.

Meanwhile, deliveries of foreign aid to areas beyond the regime’s control have been deliberately blocked or diverted.

Since June 2021, when regime ally Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution allowing eastern Syria to continue receiving cross-border support via Iraq, all UN aid to the region must first pass through Damascus.

This has resulted in severe shortages of medical supplies, poor coordination between health authorities, and limited testing capacity in eastern Syria.

For the people of Raqqa, the outbreak of cholera is only the latest in a litany of crises they are forced to face alone.




A woman suffering from cholera receives treatment at the Al-Kasrah hospital in Syria's eastern province of Deir Ezzor. (AFP)

“The Syrian regime is not helping. People are already feeling haggard and depressed from the daily struggles brought on by the war,” Ahmad, a community activist in Raqqa who declined to give his full name, told Arab News.

“We know we are in trouble, but we also know help will not come from the Syrian regime. We know aid will not come locally or internationally. People do not care anymore. The cholera doesn’t faze us. We’ve been dying from war, chemical weapons and the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We often muse how our lives have become Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book: ‘Love in the time of cholera,’” he added.




“Cholera doesn’t know borders and lines of control, and spreads along population movements,” said Bertrand Bainvel, UNICEF deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa. (Supplied)

In response to the cholera outbreak, Doctors Without Borders, in cooperation with local health officials in Raqqa, has established a local treatment center and two outpatient clinics in the AANES.

However, maintaining adequate food hygiene and access to clean drinking water has become increasingly difficult for most Syrians since the onset of the economic crisis and the currency collapse of 2019, which were compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the spiraling price of food and fuel since the outbreak of war in Ukraine earlier this year.

According to the World Food Programme, the average price of food items in Syria has risen 532 percent since 2020. As a result, some 12 million people still living in Syria are now considered food insecure.

“Goods have become unattainable,” said Ahmad. “Talk on the street is that death is the best escape. And it will come, if not from cholera or COVID-19, then from hunger.”




A Syrian boy carries a bucket of water at the Sahlah Al-Banat camp for displaced people in the countryside of Raqa, in northern Syria. (AFP)

Conditions in neighboring Lebanon, where millions of Syrians have sought refuge in crowded camps since the outbreak of civil war, are not much better.

Already grappling with its own unprecedented economic crisis, which has thrown 80 percent of its citizens into poverty and left its infrastructure in tatters, Lebanon has also recorded cases of cholera.

Firass Abiad, Lebanon’s health minister, confirmed on Tuesday that the country had recorded 17 cholera deaths and 93 hospitalizations nationwide, including cases in the capital Beirut.

The government is trying to secure 600,000 vaccine doses for the most vulnerable, including prisoners, frontline workers and refugees residing in cramped and often squalid camps.

For most Syrians and Lebanese, who must foot their own medical bills amid rising prices and shattered health infrastructure, the omens are not good.

“I don’t even know where to start. If I get infected I don’t know if I can afford or even have a hospital bed ready for me,” Lina, a Lebanese citizen living in Akkar, a poverty-stricken area of northern Lebanon, told Arab News.

“Life has become unbearably difficult. But, at the end of the day, it’s just another way to die.”


Trump will host Jordan’s King Abdullah II as he escalates pressure on his Gaza resettlement plan

Updated 52 min 39 sec ago
Follow

Trump will host Jordan’s King Abdullah II as he escalates pressure on his Gaza resettlement plan

  • King Abdullah II’s visit is happening at a perilous moment for the ongoing ceasefire in Gaza
  • Jordan, home to more than 2 million Palestinians, flatly rejected Trump’s plan to relocate civilians from Gaza

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump will host Jordan’s King Abdullah II at the White House on Tuesday as he escalates pressure on the Arab nation to take in refugees from Gaza — perhaps permanently — as part of his audacious plan to remake the Middle East.
The visit is happening at a perilous moment for the ongoing ceasefire in Gaza as Hamas, accusing Israel of violating the truce, has said it is pausing future releases of hostages and as Trump has called for Israel to resume fighting if all those remaining in captivity are not freed by this weekend.
Trump has proposed the US take control of Gaza and turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East,” with Palestinians in the war-torn territory pushed into neighboring nations with no right of return.
He suggested on Monday that, if necessary, he would withhold US funding from Jordan and Egypt, longtime US allies and among the top recipients of its foreign aid, as a means of persuading them to accept additional Palestinians from Gaza.
“Yeah, maybe. Sure, why not?” Trump told reporters. “If they don’t, I would conceivably withhold aid, yes.”
Jordan is home to more than 2 million Palestinians and, along with other Arab states, has flatly rejected Trump’s plan to relocate civilians from Gaza.
Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said last week that his country’s opposition to Trump’s idea was “firm and unwavering.”

Opinion

This section contains relevant reference points, placed in (Opinion field)


In addition to concerns about jeopardizing the long-held goals of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Egypt and Jordan have privately raised security concerns about welcoming large numbers of additional refugees into their countries even temporarily.
When asked how he’d persuade Abdullah to take in Palestinians, Trump told reporters, “I do think he’ll take, and I think other countries will take also. They have good hearts.”
The king is also meeting with top Trump administration officials during his visit, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He is the third foreign leader to hold an in-person meeting with Trump since his Jan. 20 inauguration.
Trump announced his ideas for resettling Palestinians from Gaza and taking ownership of the territory for the US during a press conference last week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump initially didn’t rule out deploying US troops to help secure Gaza but at the same time insisted no US funds would go to pay for the reconstruction of the territory, raising fundamental questions about the nature of his plan.
After Trump’s initial comments, Rubio and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted that Trump only wanted Palestinians relocated from Gaza “temporarily” and sought an “interim” period to allow for debris removal, the disposal of unexploded ordnance and reconstruction.
But asked in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier that aired Monday if Palestinians in Gaza would have a right to return to the territory under his plan, he replied, “No, they wouldn’t.”


Trump says Hamas should free all hostages by midday Saturday or ‘let hell break out’

Updated 11 February 2025
Follow

Trump says Hamas should free all hostages by midday Saturday or ‘let hell break out’

  • Trump said he might withhold aid to Jordan and Egypt if they don’t take Palestinian refugees being relocated from Gaza. He is to meet Jordan’s King Abdullah on Tuesday

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Monday that Hamas should release all hostages held by the militant group in Gaza by midday Saturday or he would propose canceling the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and “let hell break out.”
Trump cautioned that Israel might want to override him on the issue and said he might speak to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But in a wide-ranging session with reporters in the Oval Office, Trump expressed frustration with the condition of the last group of hostages freed by Hamas and by the announcement by the militant group that it would halt further releases.
“As far as I’m concerned, if all of the hostages aren’t returned by Saturday at 12 o’clock, I think it’s an appropriate time. I would say, cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break out. I’d say they ought to be returned by 12 o’clock on Saturday,” Trump said.
He said he wanted the hostages released en masse, instead of a few at a time. “We want ‘em all back.”
Trump also said he might withhold aid to Jordan and Egypt if they don’t take Palestinian refugees being relocated from Gaza. He is to meet Jordan’s King Abdullah on Tuesday.
The comments came on a day of some confusion over Trump’s proposal for a US takeover of Gaza once the fighting stops.
He said Palestinians would not have the right of return to the Gaza Strip under his proposal to redevelop the enclave, contradicting his own officials who had suggested Gazans would only be relocated temporarily.
In an excerpt of an interview with Fox News channel’s Bret Baier broadcast on Monday, Trump added that he thought he could make a deal with Jordan and Egypt to take the displaced Palestinians, saying the US gives the two countries “billions and billions of dollars a year.”
Asked if Palestinians would have the right to return to Gaza, Trump said: “No, they wouldn’t because they’re going to have much better housing.”
“I’m talking about building a permanent place for them,” he said, adding it would take years for Gaza to be habitable again.
In a shock announcement on Feb. 4 after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, Trump proposed resettling Gaza’s 2.2 million Palestinians and the US taking control of the seaside enclave, redeveloping it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

IGNITE THE REGION
Trump’s suggestion of Palestinian displacement has been repeatedly rejected by Gaza residents and Arab states, and labeled by rights advocates and the United Nations as a proposal of ethnic cleansing.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Trump’s statement that Palestinians would not be able to return to Gaza was “irresponsible.”
“We affirm that such plans are capable of igniting the region,” he told Reuters on Monday.
Netanyahu, who praised the proposal, suggested Palestinians would be allowed to return. “They can leave, they can then come back, they can relocate and come back. But you have to rebuild Gaza,” he said the day after Trump’s announcement.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who will depart later this week for his first visit to the Middle East in the office, said on Thursday that Palestinians would have to “live somewhere else in the interim,” during reconstruction, although he declined to explicitly rule out their permanent displacement.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the disparity between Rubio and Trump’s most recent remarks on the plan.
Trump’s comments come as a fragile ceasefire reached last month between Israel and Hamas is at risk of collapse after Hamas announced on Monday it would stop releasing Israeli hostages over alleged Israeli violations of the agreement.
Israel’s Arab neighbors, including Egypt and Jordan, have said any plan to transfer Palestinians from their land would destabilize the region.
Rubio met Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty in Washington on Monday. Egypt’s foreign ministry said Abdelatty told Rubio that Arab countries support Palestinians in rejecting Trump’s plan. Cairo fears Palestinians could be forced across Egypt’s border with Gaza.
Trump said in the Fox News interview that between two and six communities could be built for the Palestinians “a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is.” “I would own this. Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land. No big money spent,” he said.

 


Dozens of Palestinian families flee Israeli operation in West Bank

Updated 11 February 2025
Follow

Dozens of Palestinian families flee Israeli operation in West Bank

  • The Palestinian foreign ministry accused Israel of applying “the same policy of destruction” in the West Bank as in Gaza

NUR SHAMS, Palestinian Territories: Dozens of Palestinian families fled on Monday from the Nur Shams refugee camp in the north of the occupied West Bank, as Israel pushed on with a sweeping military operation.
“We hear explosions and bombings as well as bulldozers. It’s a tragedy. They are doing here what they did in Gaza,” said Ahmed Ezza, a resident.
Ahmed Abu Zahra, another resident of the camp which is on the outskirts of Tulkarem, said he was forced to leave his home.
“The (Israeli) army came and we were forced to leave after they started destroying our homes.”
Three Palestinians, including two women and a young man, were killed on Sunday in Nur Shams, the health ministry in the territory said.
Israel said its military police had opened an investigation into the death of one of them, a woman who was eight months pregnant.
It said on Saturday it had launched an operation in Nur Shams, part of a much larger campaign that began in January in Tulkarem and Jenin, which it said had “targeted several terrorists.”
In the streets of Nur Shams camp, under a light rain, residents were fleeing.
An AFP photographer saw dozens of families hastily leaving the camp, while bulldozers carried out large-scale demolitions amid gunfire and explosions.
According to Murad Alyan, from the camp’s popular committee, “more than half of the 13,000 inhabitants have fled out of fear for their lives.”
Since January 21, the Israeli military has been conducting a major operation in the “triangle” of Jenin, Tubas and Tulkarem, where half a million Palestinians live.
Israel says it is targeting “terrorist infrastructure.”
Jenin in particular is a bastion of armed Palestinian militant groups.
“What we are living through is without precedent,” Ahmad Al-Assaad, the governor of Tubas, told AFP.
The Israeli operations “today did not target fighters, but civilians, women and children, and they blew houses to pressure residents into leaving.”
According to the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, Israel was pursuing an “all-our war on the Palestinian people.”
“Since the ceasefire began in Gaza, the West Bank has been on fire,” it said in a post on X, referring to the truce agreement that halted the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza on January 19.
“The objective of these operations is not security-related, but political,” said Abdallah Kamil, the governor of Tulkarem.
“They destroy everything,” he said of the Israeli military. “They are trying to change the demographics of the region.”
Israel insists that its operations are targeted at Palestinians suspected of preparing attacks against Israeli citizens.
The Palestinian foreign ministry accused Israel of applying “the same policy of destruction” in the West Bank as in Gaza.
Violence has exploded in the occupied West Bank since the war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
At least 887 Palestinians, including militants, have been killed by the Israeli military or settlers, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
At least 32 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations, according to official Israeli figures.


Former UK Supreme Court judge claims Israel’s Gaza assault is ‘grossly disproportionate’

Updated 11 February 2025
Follow

Former UK Supreme Court judge claims Israel’s Gaza assault is ‘grossly disproportionate’

  • Jonathan Sumption speaks ahead of publication of his new book

LONDON: Jonathan Sumption, a former UK Supreme Court judge, has described Israel’s military actions in Gaza as “grossly disproportionate,” and added there was “at least an arguable case” that they were genocidal.

Speaking ahead of the release of his new book, “The Challenges of Democracy: And The Rule of Law,” Sumption explained to The Guardian newspaper why he signed a letter last year accusing the UK government of breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel.

He said: “I thought — and I still think — that the conduct of Israel in Gaza is grossly disproportionate and there’s at least an arguable case that it’s genocidal. One can’t put it higher than that because genocide depends on intent. That’s quite a difficult thing to establish but I read the provisional decision of the International Court (of Justice) and it seemed to me that they were saying that that was an arguable proposition.

“Given that the obligation of parties to the genocide convention is proactively to prevent it happening and not just to react after the event, I thought that the authors of the letter — and I wasn’t the draftsman — had got a point.”

Israel has denied committing genocide, maintaining that its military operations were acts of self-defense while also rejecting the ICJ’s findings.

Sumption’s book, which is published on Thursday, focuses on perceived threats to democracy, including restrictions on free speech. He expresses concern over how certain opinions, particularly those supporting Palestinian rights, have been suppressed in some countries.

He said: “I think that supporters of the Palestinian cause have had a rough time in a number of European jurisdictions, notably Germany, where there’s been direct — and government — moves to suppress that strand of thought altogether.

“We haven’t got anywhere near as close to things as that … but there’s certainly been a lot of calls for toughness on pro-Palestine demonstrations, which assume, without actually saying, that it’s perfectly obvious that support for Palestine is wrong. I don’t think it’s wrong.”


Syria forces accuse Hezbollah of attacks, sponsoring smuggling at border

Updated 10 February 2025
Follow

Syria forces accuse Hezbollah of attacks, sponsoring smuggling at border

  • Syrian forces clashed with smuggling gangs near the Lebanese border this week
  • Forces raided locations involved in the production and packaging of various drugs

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group has launched attacks on Syrian security forces and is sponsoring cross-border smuggling gangs, the new Syrian authorities said on Monday, according to state media.
Syrian forces clashed with smuggling gangs this week, most of whom were affiliated with Hezbollah, but did not target Lebanese territory, Lt. Col. Moayed Al-Salama said in a statement carried by official news agency SANA.
Hezbollah was allied to former Syrian strongman Bashar Assad, who was toppled by opposition rebels in December.
The new authorities in Damascus launched anti-smuggling operations last week at the Lebanese-Syria border, where the Iranian-backed group holds sway.
“Most smuggling gangs on the Lebanese border are affiliated with the Hezbollah militia, whose presence now poses a threat at the Syrian border because it sponsors drug and weapon smugglers,” Salama was reported as saying.
“We have developed a comprehensive plan to fully control the borders,” said the official, whom SANA described as the commander for the western region in the Border Security Administration.
“We confirm that we did not target the Lebanese interior, despite shelling from the Hezbollah militia reaching our units,” Salama said.
On Saturday, the Lebanese army said it responded to incoming fire from across the Syrian border, two days after the new authorities in Damascus said they had launched operations against smugglers there.
The army did not name those responsible for firing toward Lebanon.
He blamed “the defunct regime” for turning “the Syrian-Lebanese border into corridors for the drug trade in cooperation with the Hezbollah militia, promoting the presence of armed smuggling gangs.”
Operations “were limited to Syrian border villages, targeting the armed smuggling gangs and remnants (of the Assad government) and militias who fought with them,” he added.
Syrian forces seized “farms, warehouses and factories for the production and packaging of hashish and captagon pills,” he said, referring to the potent synthetic drug which Syria mass-produced under Assad.
They also found presses specialized in printing counterfeit currency, he said, as well as as shipments of weapons and drugs that were about to cross in.
Syria shares a 330-kilometer (205-mile) border with Syria, with no official demarcation at several points, making it porous and prone to smuggling.
Assad’s fall in December disrupted Hezbollah’s arms supply lines through the land border with Syria.