Tag Archives: cemetery

Jordan cemetery struggles amid COVID-19 surge

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) – Clerks at the largest cemetery in Jordan barely have a moment to themselves as people rush to pay for graves to bury relatives amid a record surge of deaths from COVID-19.

The cemetery on the outskirts of the capital saw at least 50 burials on Tuesday, a day after the health ministry announced 109 COVID-19 deaths, the kingdom’s highest daily tally.

“We have no time to scratch our heads,” said Ahmad Jaber as he completed a 50 dinar ($70) invoice for a plot at the Amman municipal cemetery while bereaved relatives waited in line.

The surge in the last two months, blamed on the fast spread of the variant first identified in Britain, has put Jordan’s infections and deaths above most of its neighbors and reverses months of success in containing the outbreak.

The government, which says there are 3,334 COVID-19 patients in hospital, is facing a crisis with some wards at capacity, especially in the capital and surrounding provinces where over 60% of the country’s 10 million population live.

“We hope the daily infections don’t continue this way, otherwise there will be a real problem in the availability of isolation rooms and intensive care units,” said Fawzi Hammouri, the head of Jordan’s private hospital association.

Coronavirus wards in 27 private hospitals are now at 90% occupancy and intensive care units are at 78% capacity in and around the capital.

Private hospitals are considering scrapping non-urgent procedures and outpatient clinics, steps taken by public hospitals earlier this month, to create more space.

Some officials have suggested the government should use sports stadiums, refurbish old hospitals or set up beds in schools.

“The infections are heading for more increases,” said Interior Minister and acting Health Minister Mazen al Faraya.

To spare the economy, Prime Minister Bisher al Khasawneh has so far avoided a two-week lockdown recommended by medics.

The government earlier this month extended a night curfew, ordered a full Friday lockdown and imposed stricter penalties on violators of social distancing rules.

EMERGENCY WARD OVERWHELMED

At Jordan University hospital, a 100-bed ward for COVID-19 patients has been full for the past week and medics struggle to keep those patients separate from others with serious ailments, said hospital director Islam Massad.

“I hope we can control this and numbers fall because the situation is getting very difficult,” said Ahmad Saafeen, head of emergency ward.

The situation is slightly better outside big towns, where intensive care unit capacity is at 30% to 50%, according to official data.

But trust in the public health service is at a record low with gross negligence exposed after nine people, mostly COVID-19 patients, died earlier this month when medics ignored depleted oxygen supplies.

The scandal means Khasawneh is facing his toughest challenge since being appointed last October, politicians say.

Anger over the crisis, which has pushed unemployment to a record 24%, sent hundreds of demonstrators on to the streets earlier this month, defying the curfew and calling for Khasawneh’s removal.

(Additional reporting by Jehad Abu Shalbak and Muath Freij in Amman; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Jewish cemetery vandalized in New York, third case in two weeks

Local and national media report on more than 170 toppled Jewish headstones after a weekend vandalism attack on Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in University City, a suburb of St Louis, Missouri, U.S. February 21, 2017. REUTERS/Tom Gannam

By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The vandalism of more than a dozen headstones at a Jewish cemetery in Rochester is being investigated by a New York hate crime task force, the third known case of a Jewish cemetery desecration in the country in the last two weeks.

Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he ordered the investigation at Waad Hakolel Cemetery given the wave of bomb threats that later proved hoaxes targeting Jewish community centers and vandalism at Jewish cemeteries in Philadelphia and St. Louis.

U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican, has condemned the threats and attacks, although he has at times also questioned whether some perpetrators might be opponents of his seeking to link his new presidency with a rise in anti-Semitism.

Trump’s election campaign last year drew support from some white nationalists and right-wing groups, despite his disavowals of them.

Besides the toppling of headstones at the Rochester cemetery, images of the deceased embedded on at least half a dozen headstones had been scratched away, although it was not clear how long ago, said Karen Elam, the director of community relations at the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester.

“It’s clear vandalism,” she said in a telephone interview after touring the cemetery on Thursday afternoon to photograph the damage. “Any vandalism of a Jewish cemetery is de facto anti-Semitism.”

Michael Phillips, president of the non-profit organization that oversees the cemetery, told the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle newspaper that there was no proof the vandalization was a case of anti-Semitism, citing the smaller scale of the damage in Rochester.

About 100 headstones were knocked over at a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia last weekend, and about 170 headstones were knocked over in a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis.

Officials at the cemetery in Rochester did not return calls seeking comment. In 2014, vandals toppled more than 40 headstones at another Jewish cemetery near Rochester, but local police concluded the vandalism was not motivated by anti-Semitism, the Democrat & Chronicle reported.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by David Gregorio and Lisa Shumaker)

World’s largest cemetery grows bigger as Shi’ite militias bury their dead

he Wadi al-Salam cemetery, Arabic for "Peace Valley", is seen in Najaf, south of Baghdad, Iraq

By Alaa al-Marjani and Saif Hameed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The world’s largest cemetery, in Iraq’s Shi’ite holy city of Najaf, is expanding at double its usual rate as the nation’s death rate increased with the war on Islamic State.

The Wadi al-Salam cemetery, Arabic for “Peace Valley,” has a special place in the hearts of Shi’ite Muslims as it surrounds the Mausoleum of their first imam, Ali Bin Abi Talib, a cousin and son-in-law of Prophet Mohammad.

The pace of daily burials rose to 150-200 after Islamic State, the ultra-hardline Sunni group overran a third of the country in 2014, said Jihad Abu Saybi, a historian of the cemetery. The rate was 80-120 a day previously, he said.

Shi’ite paramilitary often visit Ali’s golden-domed shrine before heading to the frontlines to battle Islamic State, and request to be laid to rest in Wadi al-Salam should they be killed, as a reward for their sacrifice.

As land becomes scarce, the cost of a standard 25 square meter family burial lot has risen to about 5 million Iraqi dinars ($4100) almost double the amount paid for the same lots before violence escalated as IS exerted control over large swathes of north and western Iraq in 2014.

Millions of graves of different shapes lie in the roughly 10 square km (4 square miles) cemetery that attracts burials from Shiites all over the world. By nationality, Iraq’s Iranian neighbors are thought to come second in number people interred near Ali’s golden-domed shrine.

Often built with baked bricks and plaster, decorated with Koranic calligraphy, some graves are above ground tombs, reflecting the wealth of those within.

(Editing by Jeremy Gaunt.)