BEIRUT: Palestinian leaders have failed in a bid to establish a cease-fire in Ain Al-Hilweh refugee camp in southern Lebanon.
Clashes intensified in the Hattin and Ras Al-Ahmar neighborhoods within the camp on Wednesday. Militants from the Fatah movement and various extremist groups utilized a number of types of rocket-propelled grenade, as well as light and medium weapons.
Since last Wednesday, there have been five attempts to establish a cease-fire, each lasting only a few hours before militants resumed the violence, resulting in significant destruction in the area.
The death toll has reached 10, which includes one Lebanese killed by stray bullets while in front of his shop in the southern town of Ghazieh. The number of wounded has risen to 110, encompassing both Lebanese and Palestinians, including members of the Lebanese Armed Forces.
Representatives from Fatah, Hamas (representing the extremist groups) and the Lebanese security services, under the leadership of Army Commander Gen. Joseph Aoun, met with Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Wednesday. During the meeting, they discussed the agreement reached at the Palestinian Embassy on Tuesday regarding a cease-fire and the handing over of wanted persons suspected of assassinating Fatah leader Mohammed Al-Armoushi.
Attendees at the meeting included Azzam Al-Ahmad, a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Central Committee of the Fatah Movement, as well as Moussa Abu Marzouk, a member of the Hamas Political Bureau.
The agreement stipulated “ending media campaigns between the two parties; emphasizing the commitment of the Palestinian Joint Action Committee to establish a cease-fire, along with the understanding reached during the meeting with the leaders of the Lebanese security services at the General Directorate of Lebanese General Security; implementing the decision of the Palestinian Joint Action Committee to hand over wanted individuals accused of assassinating Al-Armoushi and his companions to the Lebanese judiciary; assigning the Joint Security Force to carry out its designated duties; and facilitating the swift return of displaced individuals to their homes and vacating schools as quickly as possible.”
Cease-fire in Ain Al-Hilweh falls through despite Fatah-Hamas agreement
https://arab.news/5fm2z
Cease-fire in Ain Al-Hilweh falls through despite Fatah-Hamas agreement
- Clashes intensified in the Hattin and Ras Al-Ahmar neighborhoods within the camp on Wednesday
- The death toll has reached 10
Dead on arrival: South Sudan’s devastated health system
- The UN says more than 5,100 civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced, and warns South Sudan is on the verge of “all-out civil war”
JUBA: South Sudan’s healthcare system has been so crippled by years of corruption that when a state governor experienced high blood pressure recently, he had to fly to Kenya for treatment.
Riek Gai Kok is the governor of Jonglei state, where conflict has once again exploded between government and opposition parties.
His trip to Nairobi was recounted by humanitarians as yet another example of how South Sudan’s elite, ranked the most corrupt in the world by Transparency International, have allowed services in the country to collapse.
HIGHLIGHT
While much of east Africa has seen improving health outcomes, South Sudan is going the other way despite receiving $1.4 billion in foreign aid in 2024.
As the country tips back into civil war between rival parties, what little health care exists is almost entirely through foreign donors, with more than 80 percent provided by NGOs like the International Committee of the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders.
In a hospital in the capital Juba, a soldier said he was amazed to have been airlifted to hospital since most wounded are
left to die.
“(When) I was shot, I thought I was dead,” said Ajuong Deng, 33, wounded in the leg.
But it was the ICRC that rescued him — not the army or the government — treating him at their facility within the Juba Military Hospital where the NGO gives staff what it euphemistically calls “incentives” because it is not officially allowed to pay them.
“If we don’t pay them then no one stays here,” said one worker, speaking anonymously.
Government pay, normally just $10-50 monthly, has not arrived for months. “This is not what we’re supposed to be doing,” said one senior humanitarian.
In the Juba hospital, wounded lay on the floor in blood-stained bandages. A man shot in the neck struggled to breathe.
The clinicians fear these men will soon be sucked back into the country’s multiple cycles of violence: the war between the government and opposition, currently raging to the north, or between various ethnic militias and cattle raiders that plague rural areas.
“I have actually had one patient who came back four times,” said Angeth Jervas Majok, the ICRC’s head physiotherapist. “On the fifth time, unfortunately
we lost him.”
With only 300 km of paved roads, many impassable during rainy seasons, wounds often grow infected before they reach a doctor, so amputations
are common.
Yet they are stigmatized: “There is a belief that (amputees) are not a human being anymore,” said Majok. “A lot of patients cannot go back home.”
The government will not say how many soldiers have died as fighting has ramped up in
the past year.
The UN says more than 5,100 civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced, and warns South Sudan is on the verge of “all-out civil war.” The last one in the 2010s killed 400,000 people.
While much of east Africa has seen improving health outcomes, South Sudan is going the other way despite receiving $1.4 billion in foreign aid in 2024, the largest amount globally as a share of GDP.
Life expectancy is 58, according to the World Bank, unimproved since independence in 2011. Maternal mortality is 1,223 per 100,000 births, compared to 197 globally. Unicef says one in 10 children do not reach their fifth birthday.
South Sudan’s oil revenues have exceeded $25 billion since 2011, yet only one percent of this year’s budget was allocated to health and the UN has said that “vast amounts never reach the sector, let alone the population” in a country where 92 percent live beneath the poverty line.
On top of all that, South Sudan is among the most dangerous places in the world to be a health worker. MSF facilities have been attacked 11 times in the past year. The ICRC surgical unit in Juba has blast doors, and stores biscuits and water next to medical equipment in case of a siege.
The US has warned it will pull funding if governance does not improve, and NGOs are pulling back as donations fall and patience runs thin with South Sudan’s leaders.
The ICRC told AFP it planned to “draw down progressively” in one facility, while attempting to reinforce local capacity.
Information Minister Ateny Wek Ateny admitted to AFP there were liquidity “difficulties” but said the government was working on it.
He rejected Transparency International’s latest report, saying: “I don’t know what criteria they have used to rank South Sudan as the most corrupt country in the world.”
