Tag Archives: Children

UN seeks to avert famine in Yemen, where a child dies every 10 minutes

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres attends the High-level Pledging Event for the Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland April 25, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations needs massive funds to avert famine in Yemen and warring parties there must ensure humanitarian aid can be delivered, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday as he opened a donor conference in Geneva.

A U.N. appeal for $2.1 billion this year for Yemen, where Guterres said a child under the age of five dies of preventable causes every 10 minutes, is only 15 percent covered.

Two years of conflict between Houthi rebels aligned with Iran and a Western-backed, Saudi-led coalition that carries out air strikes almost daily have killed at least 10,000 people in Yemen, and hunger and disease are rife there.

Nearly 19 million people or two-thirds of the population need emergency aid, Guterres said, renewing a call for peace talks and urging all parties to “facilitate the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian aid by air, sea and land”.

“We are witnessing the starving and the crippling of an entire generation. We must act now to save lives,” he added.

“All infrastructure must remain open and operational.”

Yemen’s Prime Minister Ahmed Obeid Bin Daghr said his government, which controls only part of the country, would allow access for aid supplies. “We are ready to open new corridors for this aid,” he said.

Initial pledges announced at the conference included $150 million from Saudi Arabia, $100 million from Kuwait, 50 million euros ($54.39 million) from Germany and $94 million from the United States.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has committed $1 billion to Yemen and reached a record 5 million people last month with rations but needs to scale up deliveries to reach 9 million who are deemed “severely food insecure”, its regional director Muhannad Hadi said in an interview.

They include some 3 million malnourished children.

“REAL FAMINE THAT WILL SHAME US”

“If the international community does not move right now, and if WFP does not get the right funding and support to address all needs, I think the cost of that will be real famine that will shame us in coming months and weeks,” Hadi told Reuters.

Yemen imports 90 percent of its food, 70 percent of which passes through the strategic Red Sea port of Hodeidah. Concerns are growing about a possible attack by the Yemeni government and its Arab allies, who say the Houthis use it to smuggle weapons and ammunition.

“We are concerned about (all) facilities in Yemen because at this stage we can’t afford to even lose one bridge or one road network let alone to lose a major facility like Hodeidah port,” Hadi said.

“In order to achieve security in this region, we have to address the food security needs. It’s impossible to have security in the country while people are hungry,” he said.

The U.N. called on April 5 for safeguarding of the port, where five cranes have been destroyed by airstrikes, forcing ships to line up offshore because they cannot be unloaded.

U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien told the conference the United Nations and its humanitarian partners are scaling up and are prepared to do more, “provided there are resources and access”.

(This version of the story corrects figure in para 2 to $2.1 billion instead of $1.2 billion)

(Editing by Catherine Evans)

Dolls, teddy bears return to eastern Mosul after Islamic State

A boy sits on his bicycle in front of a toy store, in eastern Mosul, Iraq

By Mohammed Al-Ramahi

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Toy shops are thriving in eastern Mosul, with Iraqi children once again able to buy dolls, teddy bears or action figures after Islamic State was driven out of the area.

The militant group banned toys with faces or eyes during the three years they controlled Iraq’s second largest city, including any anthropomorphic animals, which they deemed a form of idolatry.

But when U.S.-trained security forces drove the group from eastern Mosul in January, two toy stores sprang up and there are now 15, toy wholesaler Abu Mohammed told Reuters.

“Under Islamic State, any toys with faces we would have to make them veiled (if it is female) or only show eyes. Now this is no longer required and there is no ban on imports,” he said at his shop, Alaad for Toys.

Abu Mohammed imports toys from China and says that most of the large toy stores actually lie in the western side of the city, which is still the site of battle between Islamic State fighters and Iraqi security forces.

“Most of the large toy stores are in the west, so as soon as liberated there will be an even bigger boom.”

For toy store owner Abu Seif, business is brisk.

“Everything a child might want is available. Before there was a lot of things banned like images and faces, now a child can come choose whatever toys they want,” he said.

Parents say buying these toys for their children will help them move on after three years of war and terror.

“Children were oppressed (under Islamic State), they didn’t leave anything they didn’t ban. No faces on toys,” said Hassan, a father who was browsing for toys.

“Everyone was oppressed young and old. The toys are back, life is back, we are free.”

For Taha, whose young son stared wide-eyed at dolls, giraffes, teddy bears, and ponies in the shop, the ban on toys was just the tip of the iceberg.

“Those toys with faces were banned under the premise of apostasy and idolatry. These are myths. They are not Muslims, they are distorting Islam,” Taha said of Islamic State.

“Children are traumatized; they (Islamic State) ruined schools, they ruined toys, their (children’s) lives are hell.”

(Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; editing by Alexander Smith)

At Mosul waterfalls, Iraqis savor small joys of post-Islamic State life

Iraqi families and youths enjoy their Friday holiday at Shallalat district (Arabic for "waterfalls") in eastern Mosul, Iraq, April 21, 2017. REUTERS/ Muhammad Hamed

By Ahmed Aboulenein

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Crowds of Iraqis flocked to the waterfalls of eastern Mosul on Friday to savor simple freedoms like dancing or wearing colorful clothes that were strictly banned during almost three years of Islamic State rule.

Music blasted from tall speakers mounted on pickup trucks and mini-vans. Children splashed in the water in the city’s Shallalat (Waterfalls) district or rode bikes, horses and donkeys in the surrounding park.

It was like a mass picnic, with about 2,000 people out enjoying the sunshine, while fighting between U.S.-backed forces and Islamist militants raged only 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) away in the part of Mosul west of the Tigris River.

“We were besieged. We are happy now – families can now go out. Everyone would stay home before,” said Moaayad Ahmed, who was out with his wife and daughter at the park along a tributary to the Tigris north of the city.

“They would ask about negative, irrelevant things,” he added, referring to Islamic State, which took over Mosul in 2014 and was driven out of eastern Mosul in January.

The Sunni Muslim militants enforced a strict interpretation of Islam during their reign which included forcing men to grow long beards and women to cover their faces. Anyone breaking the rules would be severely punished.

That atmosphere was gone on Friday as women ululated with joy, all wearing bright colors rather than the black dress enforced by Islamic State fighters. Beer and whiskey bottles lay on the ground.

“Everything is great now. We could not do this under Islamic State. Back then, everything was forbidden. They would ask the men about their beard length and the women about face veils. Now everyone is happy,” said Mohammed Abu Qassem.

“We would come and they wouldn’t let us picnic. They would say cover your face. This is banned, this is haram, this is halal,” he said, using the words for forbidden and allowed.

Sporting a pink headscarf, his wife Umm Qassem chimed in: “They were harassing us – about men’s pants length, beards and face veils.”

“And whipping …,” her young son interjected.

“We are in heaven now. We were in hell under Islamic State,” she went on.

Even at the waterfall park, signs of war were not far away. There were burned out cars along the road leading into the area.

Iraqi soldiers manned checkpoints at a bridge leading to the park and patrolled the area to ensure the safety of day-trippers who snapped photos with selfie sticks, smoked hookahs and queued to buy shawarma and Moroccan chicken.

“We are very happy we got rid of Islamic State. For three years, we were destroyed, we could not wear stylish clothes,” said Muthana Irshad, who had grown his hair long and donned a gold chain dangling a dollar sign

“They destroyed youths and families. They killed two of my brothers,” he said, before going back to dance with his friends again.

(Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Special Report: Thousands face lead hazards as Trump eyes budget cuts

MD Chowdhury sits in his living room with his wife, Nazneen Fatema, and daughters, Nafia, 2, and Nabiha (R), 7, during an interview about lead safety improvements made to their lead contaminated home in Buffalo, New York March 30, 2017. REUTERS/Lindsay DeDario

By M.B. Pell, Joshua Schneyer and Andy Sullivan

BUFFALO, New York (Reuters) – Laicie Manzella lived in a rundown house on Buffalo’s east side when three of her children tested with dangerously high levels of lead in their blood. Her oldest son suffered nosebleeds, body rashes and a developmental disorder requiring speech therapy.

Checking her apartment, county health inspectors found 15 lead violations, all linked to old paint in this blue collar city plagued by lead poisoning.

A Reuters investigation found at least four city zip codes here where 40 percent of children tested from 2006 to 2014 had high lead levels, making Buffalo among the most dangerous lead hotspots in America. The rate of high lead tests in these areas was far worse – eight times greater – than that found among children across Flint, Michigan, during that city’s recent water crisis.

Federal support has helped Manzella and other families in Buffalo and beyond. This month, her family moved into a gleaming, lead-free apartment renovated by a local nonprofit with funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

This type of assistance may not last much longer. President Donald Trump is advocating deep federal budget cuts that would sap billions from programs used by state and local governments to protect children from the lifelong health impacts of lead exposure.

“If they go and snatch these funds away, where are we going to get help from?” Manzella said.

It’s a question being asked in cities across the United States bracing for cuts in programs that identify and eradicate lead poisoning hazards. Awareness of lead poisoning escalated following Flint’s crisis, and more recently from Reuters reporting that has identified more than 3,300 areas with childhood lead poisoning rates at least double those found in the Michigan city.

Some of the areas slated to be hit hardest supported Trump in November’s election, though he lost Erie County, where Buffalo is the county seat.

At least eight of the nine federal agencies sharing responsibility for lead poisoning prevention face potential budget cuts. But the heaviest lifting falls to HUD, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump’s budget would cut at least $4.7 billion from programs at HUD and the EPA that support healthy housing and lead pollution cleanup efforts, a Reuters analysis found. Funding for a CDC program that assists states with poisoning prevention is uncertain.

Cuts would be felt across the country. The Trump administration would eliminate a $27 million program that trains private contractors on lead removal, and a $21 million program that funds lead abatement projects in Alaska, Illinois, Ohio, Oklahoma and California. It would kill a program that provided funds to a Rhode Island nonprofit to upgrade housing, and end a $970 million affordable-housing program that has fixed up dilapidated homes in hundreds of U.S. cities, including Flint.

If the cuts clear Congress, some experts fear the fight against lead could stall out for years.

“We are dooming future generations,” said Dr. Gale Burstein, health commissioner in Erie County. “Exposure to high lead levels causes brain damage to kids, learning disabilities and behavioral challenges.”

Instead of saving money, the cost of inaction could spiral, Burstein said. More children would be afflicted by learning disabilities and other neurological problems, leaving localities to foot the bill for treatment programs.

White House officials declined to comment.

Decades of lead abatement have sharply curbed childhood lead levels across the United States. But studies have shown no level of lead in the blood is safe, and poisoning persists in thousands of locales.

PINPOINTING HOTSPOTS

In December, Reuters used previously undisclosed data obtained from 21 states to pinpoint nearly 3,000 U.S. neighborhoods where poisoning rates among tested children were at least twice as high as in Flint.

Reporters have since obtained testing results covering eight additional states and expanded data from two more, including New York, Louisiana, New Jersey, Virginia, New Hampshire and California. The new data reveal another 449 neighborhoods with rates that high.

The communities stretch from affluent neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area to an impoverished quarter of Shreveport, Louisiana, to a rural town in Salem County, New Jersey, where Trump won 56 percent of the vote in November.

The data paints a partial picture. Reuters has not obtained neighborhood-level testing results for 21 states and the District of Columbia. These areas cited privacy concerns or said they do not have the data.

Still, the available results show the toxic metal remains a threat to millions of children.

Federal programs fund testing for children, cleanup of industrial lead hazards and poisoning-awareness efforts. Other programs require inspections or abatement in housing built before 1978, when lead was banned from residential paint.

The few planned funding increases under Trump may not be as beneficial as they appear. HUD’s Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control Program is slated to receive a $20 million boost, but the agency has proposed eliminating $4.1 billion worth of grant programs local officials say play a bigger role in reducing risks.

“I think you’re going to see more children, not fewer children, exposed to lead,” said Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat who has sought more funding for lead-abatement programs on the Senate subcommittee that funds HUD.

Congress, which controls federal spending, may not go along. A spokeswoman for Senator Susan Collins described lead-based hazards as “one of the most prevalent health issues facing children today.” She said the Maine Republican would use her position as head of the subcommittee that controls HUD’s budget to oppose cuts.

BUFFALO A HOTBED FOR LEAD

Buffalo has long fought a legacy of lead contamination. Blood data shows 17 city zip codes where the rate of tested children with high lead levels was at least double that of Flint – about 8,000 children over nine years.

“Nobody’s talking about Buffalo as ground zero for the lead problem, but when it comes to the levels of lead that’s been identified in children, it’s higher than what you see in Flint,” said Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz.

Buffalo’s problem stems from a simple equation: Old houses plus high poverty equal lead poisoning. Older homes are often blanketed with lead paint, and the water pipes and fixtures typically contain lead. In poorer neighborhoods, homes are frequently neglected, leading to exposure from peeling paint or dust. Fifty-eight percent of the city’s housing was built before 1940; nearly 40 percent of residents live below the poverty line.

Still, Buffalo and Erie County have made progress. In 2007, three city zip codes had 50 percent of tested children with high lead levels. By 2014, the prevalence in those zip codes dropped to an improved, but still worrisome, 30 percent.

Progress came thanks to millions of dollars in federal assistance flowing to local programs.

From 2012 through 2016, Buffalo was granted $27.7 million from the now-threatened HUD HOME Investment and Partnerships Program. HUD’s blessing brought far greater resources to bear, with city, county and nonprofits using the grant to attract another $200 million to revitalize or replace 1,125 housing units, making them all lead-safe.

Among those helped: The Chowdhurys, a family of five who moved to the east side of Buffalo in 2010, settling in a neighborhood with one of the highest lead poisoning rates in the country.

Within two months, their one-year-old daughter, Nabiha, was found to have a lead level about twice that of the elevated threshold set by the CDC, five micrograms per deciliter. Any child at or above CDC’s threshold warrants a public health response, the agency says.

MD Chowdhury, a restaurant waiter, and his wife, Nazneen Fatema, didn’t know how their daughter was poisoned or how to help her, but Buffalo and Erie County did.

Local officials dispatched housing inspectors, nurses and contractors to identify and repair the lead hazards in the family’s home. Replacing the lead-paint coated windows and siding and installing a new roof cost about $40,000. Federal grant programs footed the bill.

Erie County’s Health Department receives $244,000 a year from the CDC to help fund five full-time employees and three part-time employees who refer at-risk children for testing, investigate the causes of lead poisoning and conduct educational home visits. Those staffers helped the family.

Chowdhury also took EPA-funded classes on how to safely remove lead-based-paint so he could do additional work himself.

Two years ago, the couple had another daughter. She has never tested high.

“Without these programs, it’s hard to know about lead, and my income is not enough to do all of the work we needed,” Chowdhury said.

Trump’s budget proposal would kill much of the funding that helped the family through its ordeal.

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said the case illustrates the larger peril of potential funding cuts. “There would be people who would fall through the cracks,” he said.

CARSON’S MIXED MESSAGE

While working as a pediatric neurosurgeon in Baltimore, Dr. Benjamin Carson saw the irreversible damage lead can cause in the brains of children living in substandard housing.

At his confirmation hearing in February to serve as Trump’s secretary of HUD, Carson told the Senate Banking Committee he would be “vigorous” in his efforts to reduce the tally of hundreds of thousands of poisoned children across the country.

“I’m looking forward to, you know, the Safe and Healthy Homes Program at HUD and enhancing that program very significantly,” Carson said.

But even Carson’s requested $20 million increase for HUD’s lead removal program falls short of the $29 million his agency says is needed to comply with a new policy that requires lead remediation of HUD properties where children have tested above the CDC threshold.

Other housing programs that play a bigger, if more indirect, role in protecting children’s health would be eliminated altogether.

Among them: the $125 million Choice Neighborhoods program, which provided funding to remove lead paint from New Orleans’ aging Iberville housing project, and the $970 million HOME Partnerships program, which helped the Chowdhurys clean up their house in Buffalo.

The biggest casualty could be HUD’s $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program.

Local officials use CDBG grants to fund projects from curb construction to rehabilitating old housing, with only a small portion, $10 million, directly used for lead safety standards in the most recent fiscal year.

But CDGB is crucial to poisoning prevention, since housing-related projects it helps are required to meet HUD guidelines for lead safety, said Marion McFadden, who oversaw HUD’s grant programs under President Barack Obama.

“If (cuts are) enacted, it would be a huge step backward,” McFadden said.

CDBG funds went toward lead-paint removal in cities including Milwaukee, Syracuse and Shreveport, Louisiana. All three had neighborhoods with documented lead poisoning rates at least twice Flint’s.

BUDGET CUTS IN AMISH COUNTRY

Health officials in the small city of York, Pennsylvania, two hours west of Philadelphia in Amish country, know how budget cuts like this can play out.

The city and surrounding York County, where Trump won 70 percent of the vote in November, have a serious lead poisoning problem. From 2005 through 2014, at least 30 percent of children tested in all but one of York’s census tracts had elevated lead exposure, according to CDC data. In one census tract, more than half of all tested children had high lead levels.

Trump lost the city of York, but other patches of the county hit hard by lead poisoning, including the borough of Red Lion, where 21 percent of children tested had high levels, overwhelmingly supported him.

In the mid 1990s, York had seven full-time and part-time employees working in the city’s lead prevention program who conducted screening and investigated lead exposure sources. Since then, CDC cuts have left the program with one part-time employee and no ability to conduct screening.

The results are telling. In 2005, 1,641 city children were screened for lead. In 2014, 169 kids received a lead test.

Trump’s plan to eliminate the $375,000 in Home Partnership funds the city uses to develop lead-safe housing would have dire consequences, said James Crosby, deputy director of the city’s Bureau of Housing Services.

“It would mean we would be out of business,” Crosby said. “If he eliminates the home program, we would have absolutely nothing.”

A HUD spokesman declined to comment on the impact the cuts would have. “HUD will continue to work very closely with state and local health and housing officials through targeted investments in specific programs to reduce childhood lead poisoning,” he said.

CUTS AT THE EPA

A similar pattern is emerging at the EPA, where Administrator Scott Pruitt is highlighting some lead remediation efforts while pushing to gut funding to enforce pollution laws and clean up contaminated sites.

During the confirmation process, Pruitt told lawmakers he would work to reduce exposure to lead. On Wednesday he visited East Chicago, Indiana, where the EPA has secured $42 million from chemical companies to remove contaminated soil from neighborhoods near a former lead-smelting plant. In one neighborhood, up to 20 percent of tested children had elevated lead-blood levels.

Trump’s budget proposal would preserve funding for the EPA program that helps cities like Flint buy new water pipes.

But Pruitt would slash other federal efforts, including a one-third cut of EPA’s Superfund and Brownfield programs, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars less to clean up areas contaminated by lead mining in southeast Missouri, tainted yards and parks in Omaha and old school buildings on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota.

Pruitt would also eliminate a $27 million program that trains private contractors on safe lead removal from buildings, internal documents show.

An EPA spokesman said the agency is weighing strategies to save taxpayers money while protecting the environment. “We’re trying to restore some accountability to these and other programs so that we can examine what has worked – and most especially, what hasn’t,” wrote spokesman J.P. Freire.

Funding levels for the CDC, which spent $17 million last year through the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention program to help state and local governments, have been the subject of great uncertainty.

Earlier this year Trump lobbied for a Republican health-care bill that would have repealed the Affordable Care Act. In the process, the bill would have eliminated the pool of public-health money that funds the CDC’s lead program. In March, the bill collapsed in the House of Representatives.

Last week, a White House official told Reuters the administration intends to keep funds flowing to the CDC program. By Monday, however, the official had backed away from that commitment and said the program’s fate is uncertain until the administration produces a more detailed budget proposal in May.

The last round of cuts to the CDC’s lead budget in 2011 slashed assistance to many state poisoning prevention programs.

Those cuts were a reason why Flint’s problems didn’t come to light sooner, said Mary Jean Brown, a public health specialist at Harvard University who directed CDC’s lead program at the time. Without the CDC lead program, Michigan conducted less monitoring of childhood blood levels from 2011 to 2014, and stopped reporting test results to the CDC.

This created “a big gap in data,” Brown said, contributing to Flint’s crisis going unchecked or being ignored by Michigan officials until a pediatrician, scientists and activists presented proof children had been sickened.

(Editing by Ronnie Greene)

Victims of Turkey purges fear heavier crackdown after referendum

Mehtap Yoruk, a former Turkish nursery school teacher who was dismissed as part of a massive purge after last July’s failed coup, cleans her chicken and rice stall in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, Turkey, April 7, 2017. Picture taken April 7, 2017. REUTERS/Sertac Kayar

By Umit Ozdal and Humeyra Pamuk

DIYARBAKIR/ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Mehtap Yoruk used to teach in a nursery school in southeast Turkey, until she was sacked last year in a purge of tens of thousands of state employees. Now, she ekes out a living selling chicken and rice from a food cart on a side street, dreaming of being reunited with her classroom full of children.

That day may never come if Sunday’s referendum grants President Tayyip Erdogan sweeping new powers, she said, scooping rice in a paper plate for a customer.

“If there is a ‘Yes’ in the referendum, it will be much harder for us to be reinstated in our jobs. And these removals will probably expand.”

After an abortive coup in July, Turkish authorities arrested 40,000 people and sacked or suspended 120,000 others from a wide range of professions including soldiers, police, teachers and public servants, over alleged links with terrorist groups.

The vast majority of those people, like Yoruk, say they have nothing to do with the armed attempt to overthrow the government, and are victims of a purge designed to solidify the power of an increasingly authoritarian leader.

The referendum has bitterly divided Turkey. Erdogan argues that strengthening the presidency would avert instability associated with coalition governments, at a time when Turkey faces security threats from Islamist and Kurdish militants.

But his critics fear further drift into authoritarianism, with a leader they see as bent on eroding modern Turkey’s democracy and secular foundations.

Mass detentions immediately after the attempted coup were supported by many Turks, who agreed with Erdogan when he blamed U.S.-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen for orchestrating the putsch which killed 240 people, mostly civilians.

But criticism mounted as the arrests widened to include people from all walks of life such as midwives and prison guards in remote parts of Turkey, and to pro-Kurdish opposition lawmakers, effectively leaving the nation’s third-biggest party leaderless.

“These purges are not individual cases at all. This is a systemic phenomenon empowered by an environment of lawlessness. And in the case of a ‘Yes’ win that will only get worse,” said Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu, a doctor and rights activist dismissed earlier this year.

FROM “WAR VETERAN TO TERRORIST”

A report by opposition parliamentarian Zeynep Altiok said that the purge of public employees since the coup had deprived 1.5 million students of their teachers. More than 600 companies were seized by the state, 140,000 passports were revoked and 65 elected mayors ousted, it said last month.

In addition, more than 2,000 journalists were sacked and scores of TV and radio stations, news agencies and newspapers were shut down.

United Nations rights experts said on Thursday those closures had undermined the chance for informed debate on the referendum, and a state of emergency imposed after the failed coup had been used to justify repressive measures which may be just the beginning if Erdogan wins greater powers on Sunday.

“Given the arbitrary and sweeping nature of the emergency decrees issued since July 2016, there is serious concern that such powers might be used in ways that exacerbate the existing major violations of economic, social and cultural rights,” the U.N. experts on education, poverty and free speech said.

After a decade as prime minister, Erdogan assumed the presidency in 2014. He has already transformed what had been a largely ceremonial role into a platform for action, and the referendum would formally grant him executive powers once reserved for the cabinet that answers to parliament.

He has also promised to reinstate the death penalty if the ‘Yes’ vote wins, almost certainly ending Turkey’s decades-long bid to join the European Union, which bars executions. Turkey’s EU candidate status has been one of the brakes on Ankara, requiring steps to improve human rights and transparency.

Aysegul Karaosmanoglu, a headscarved teacher suspended two days after the coup and sacked in September, said the coup was used as an excuse by the government to purge dissidents. A “Yes” win would probably broaden and deepen that crackdown, she said.

“It could create an environment for all dissidents to be hanged, or denied any chance of life,” Karaosmanoglu, 45, said. “I hear they are opening lots of new prisons. I guess they’ll put people like us there”.

She was speaking at a rare gathering in Istanbul this week of purged civil servants and families of those jailed, who came together to publicize their plight. They rejected any link with the failed coup, and some said they were sacked for causes as remote from any real wrongdoing as simply being members of a union which was deemed a Gulenist institution.

Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, denies involvement in the coup. He is a former Erdogan ally whose network was declared a terrorist group by Turkey’s national security council two months before the failed coup.

Ahmet Erkaslan, a gendarmerie officer who was shot by Kurdish militants during a security operation in Diyarbakir’s Sur district last year, says he was sacked from his job without being given a reason. That has transformed him from a war veteran to a so-called terrorist, overnight.

“I still remember the whistle of the bullets as I lay on the ground,” Erkaslan said.

He said he expects it will be difficult to get his job back, regardless of how the country votes in the plebiscite.

“Even if the removals stop, they would no longer employ people who are critical of them,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Dominic Evans and Peter Graff)

For families of radicalizing U.S. youth, a help line

Program coordinator David Phillippi (L) and Executive Director Myrian Nadri with "Parents For Peace", a support group founded by parents whose children were involved in extremist violence and which is starting a telephone helpline for people who fear their loved ones are being recruited into extremist organizations, speak to Reuters in Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S., March 23, 2017. Picture taken March 23, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By Scott Malone

BOSTON (Reuters) – Melvin Bledsoe felt helpless as he watched his son transform – becoming distant, converting to Islam and changing his name from Carlos Bledsoe to Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad.

The Baptist father of two wishes there was someone who could have offered him guidance before the 22-year-old attacked a U.S. Army recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas, killing a soldier and wounding another in 2009.

“I didn’t have any help. I didn’t have no one to turn to, no one to lean on but my other family members,” Bledsoe, 61, who runs a tour company in his native Memphis, Tennessee, recalled in a recent phone interview.

Bledsoe, hoping to give parents in similar situations and fearful of calling the police more options than he had, founded the nonprofit Parents for Peace and launched what it bills as the first citizen-run U.S. telephone help line to counter the ideologies that lead to violent extremism.

The help line, which quietly began tests of operations in December but only now is making itself known widely, is aimed at filling a void in the United States and perhaps avert violence by offering parents and others a way to better communicate with loved ones flirting with extremism, according to people who study it.

“It could be a powerful thing. People don’t have anywhere to go if they have a concern about their kids and they don’t want to go to law enforcement,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.

Another group, called Life After Hate and based in Chicago, offers assistance to people personally involved in white supremacist organizations who are looking to break away. And some Muslim leaders across the country offer counseling to those tempted to turn to violence.

The Parents for Peace help line – +1-844-49-PEACE (+1-844-487-3223) – models itself on suicide help lines and other groups addressing such issues, and is open not only to those dealing with militant Islamist ideologies but also white supremacist and other radicalizations.

The United States has seen dozens of extremist attacks since the Little Rock incident, from the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and the 2016 Orlando nightclub massacre carried out by militant Islamists, to the 2015 mass shooting at a historically black Charleston, South Carolina, church by a white man who wanted to start a race war.

DIFFERENT BELIEFS, SIMILAR PATHS

Although very different ideologies motivated the attackers, many followed similar paths to violence, immersing themselves in angry online communities.

“Former neo-Nazis and former jihadists report similar things,” said Myriam Nadri, a therapist of French-Moroccan heritage with an office in Boston who is the group’s executive director. “They talk about experiences with humiliation, they talk about extreme rage and anger.”

Calls to the help line are answered by two staffers, who work out of a tiny office in Boston. They begin calls by taking time to hear out callers’ concerns.

The counselors then advise callers on techniques to persuade their loved ones to open up about their activities, in order to counter the secrecy that militant and criminal groups usually urge on their members.

So far, the line has received just a couple of calls, but Nadri said she expects the volume to pick up as the group does more to publicize its existence.

In some cases, callers may be put in contact with Bledsoe or other members of his group who have lost loved ones to extremism. Bledsoe’s son survived his attack and is serving a life sentence, while other members of Parents for Peace have seen relatives killed.

Their number includes Carole Mansfield of Burton, Michigan, whose granddaughter, Nicole, traveled to Syria to join its civil war and died in the fighting in 2013.

“I’m battling cancer and I just hope and pray that I can live long enough to help at least one family save their loved one,” Mansfield said in a recent phone interview. “That’s the mission that I have in my life.”

The help line makes clear that callers who fear an attack is imminent should call authorities. The group otherwise has avoided working directly with law enforcement, and has not sought any funding from the U.S. government’s “countering violent extremism” program.

That Justice Department program, established during Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration, aimed to address the factors that drive some to violence by providing grants and other resources to community groups to develop prevention efforts.

Obama’s successor, Republican President Donald Trump, now wants the program to focus solely on Islamist militancy, rather than also addressing white supremacist groups. That move has drawn criticism from Democrats in Congress.

The proposed policy shift makes Parents for Peace’s neutrality all the more important, Bledsoe said.

“It should be about any extremist,” he said. “Parents for Peace is willing to talk to anyone who feels there is a threat.”

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

For survivors of past Syrian nerve gassing, new attack brings back horror and despair

Abu Malek, one of the survivors of a chemical attack in the Ghouta region of Damascus that took place in 2013, uses his crutches to walk along a street in the Ghouta town of Ain Tarma, Syria

BEIRUT/EASTERN GHOUTA, Syria (Reuters) – It’s the dead children that still haunt Abu Ghassan, who was blinded for more than a month and paralysed for weeks by a nerve gas attack four years ago in a Damascus suburb. He recovered; 37 members of his family were among the hundreds of dead.

Last week, when another gas attack killed at least 87 people hundreds of miles to the north, the memories rushed back, hard. When he learned of it, he wept “like a child”, the 50 year-old recalls in Ain Tarma, one of three towns hit by poison gas in 2013 in areas near Damascus collectively known as the Ghouta.

Last week’s attack in the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun was the first time Western countries say the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad again used the banned nerve gas sarin since the attack four years ago in the Ghouta.

Damascus denies it was to blame for either attack, but the diplomatic effects of both were dramatic. Four years ago, the United States nearly bombed the Syrian government, only to pull back when Assad agreed to give up his chemical arsenal and submit to U.N. inspections. After last week’s attack, President Donald Trump fired U.S. cruise missiles at Syrian government targets for the first time.

Survivors of the Ghouta attack four years ago never lost the fear they could be gassed again at any moment, said Amer Zaydan, a 28-year-old school director from another part of eastern Ghouta. The new strike hammered it home.

“After the Khan Sheikhoun massacre, we’ve gone back to that first moment, as if we are the ones who went through it,” he said. “The people here are terrified.”

Since last week’s attack – which like those four years ago came just before dawn when the wind is the calmest and poison gas most effective – residents have activated a night watch, staying up to warn others in case of another attack.

Zaydan recalls seeing hundreds of dead people before falling unconscious himself as he tried to help victims. He was blinded for days. “It was like the end of days.”

“I don’t know what happened to the child I was holding at the time,” said Zaydan. Seven members of his family were killed. One of his cousins, presumed dead, was being prepared for burial when it was discovered he was still alive.

“We have not forgotten this thing. It cannot be forgotten, when you see hundreds of people dying, it’s a scene that cannot possibly be forgotten,” he said. “You walk through a district, you remember that here an entire family died, or here an entire district died.”

VINEGAR BY HIS SIDE

Abu Ghassan in Ain Tarma also lives with the constant fear of another strike.

He says he was saved only by his military training, covering his face with a wet shirt when he first sense the poison, while none of the friends he was with survived. Since then, he has always kept cloth and vinegar to hand in case of another attack.

Pieces of a rocket that bore the poison still litter the rubble-strewn floor of the apartment that it struck. Some parts were taken by U.N. inspectors, but the rest was kept in case it can one day be used in a war crimes tribunal, Abu Ghassan said.

Residents have returned to live in most of the apartment block. Abu Ghassan remembers returning home to the sight of dead birds and chickens in the street by the house.

Today, Syrian government forces are in a much stronger position than they were four years ago, and the opposition-held areas are even more vulnerable. The western Ghouta, where one of the strikes hit, is now under government control.

The eastern Ghouta, where two towns were hit, has been effectively under siege for years and more vulnerable than ever, say doctors, who have never been able to replenish supplies of atropine, the medicine used to treat nerve gas patients.

“After the massacre in Khan Sheikhoun, it’s like the Ghouta is on high alert. We feel as though we are next,” said Abu Ibrahim Baker, a surgeon who treated victims of the attack four years ago at two hospitals.

“If God forbid a massacre happens like the 2013 one, there will be three or four times the deaths, because we no longer have as much atropine or capacities to resist at all.”

Hammam Daoud, a doctor who was in western Ghouta during the 2013 attack, said he was immediately struck on seeing the images last week of bodies gone limp and patients foaming at the mouth.

“The pictures we saw from Khan Sheikhoun were similar to what we saw. The pictures of the victims, the symptoms were almost identical,” said Daoud, speaking from Turkey, where he moved a few months ago as part of a negotiated withdrawal that gave Assad’s opponents safe passage out of the area.

“It is hard to talk about, it was greater than anything you expect. Medically, the thoracic symptoms did not cease, no one was 100 percent better, and we were unable to treat them well, because we had no tools,” he said in a phone interview.

Seeing footage from Khan Sheikhoun, he said he felt “the same level of despair”.

“This despair will not leave us. The helplessness you feel because of these cases, it is unmatched,” he said. “I lost hope in everything.”

(Reporting by Tom Perry, Ellen Francis in Beirut, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, and a reporter in the Eastern Ghouta; writing by Tom Perry; editing by Peter Graff)

Assad tells paper he sees no ‘option except victory’ in Syria

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Croatian newspaper Vecernji List in Damascus, Syria, in this handout picture provided by SANA on April 6, 2017. SANA/Handout via REUTERS

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said there is no “option except victory” in the country’s civil war in an interview published on Thursday, saying the government could not reach “results” with opposition groups that attended recent peace talks.

The interview with Croatian newspaper Vecernji List appeared to have been conducted before U.S. President Donald Trump accused Assad of crossing “many, many lines” with a poison gas attack on Tuesday.

Assad was not asked about the chemical attack in the northwestern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, a text of the interview published by the Syrian state news agency SANA showed. The government has strongly denied any role.

More than six years into the Syrian conflict, Assad appears militarily unassailable in the areas of western Syria where he has shored up his rule with decisive help from the Russian military and Iranian-backed militias from across the region.

The interview published on Thursday underlined Assad’s confidence as he reiterated his goal of dealing a total defeat to the insurgency. He also reiterated his rejection of federalism sought by Kurdish groups in northern Syria.

“As I said a while ago, we have a great hope which is becoming greater; and this hope is built on confidence, for without confidence there wouldn’t be any hope. In any case, we do not have any other option except victory,” he said.

“If we do not win this war, it means that Syria will be deleted from the map. We have no choice in facing this war, and that’s why we are confident, we are persistent and we are determined,” he said.

More than 70 people, including at least 20 children, were killed in the chemical attack on Tuesday.

The Russian allies say the deaths were caused by a leak from an arms depot where rebels were making chemical weapons, after it was hit in a Syrian air strike. Rebels deny this.

Rebels have in recent weeks launched two of their boldest offensives in many months, attacking in Damascus and north of the government-held city of Hama. The army says both assaults have been repelled.

Assad, citing recent rebel offensives in Damascus and near the northern city of Hama, said “the opposition which exists is a jihadi opposition in the perverted sense of jihad”.

“That is why we cannot, practically, reach any actual result with this part of the opposition (in talks). The evidence is that during the Astana negotiations they started their attack on the cities of Damascus and Hama and other parts of Syria, repeating the cycle of terrorism and the killing of innocents.”

The Russian-backed Astana talks were launched with support from Turkey, a major backer of the opposition to Assad. They sponsored a ceasefire between the government and rebels which has been widely violated since it was declared in December.

A new round of indirect peace talks concluded in Geneva in late March without any major breakthrough towards ending the conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and created millions of refugees.

The Syrian government views all the groups fighting it as terrorists with agendas determined by foreign governments including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United States.

(Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Conference on Syria overshadowed by chemical attack

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini takes part in a joint news conference during an international conference on the future of Syria and the region, in Brussels, Belgium, April 5, 2017. REUTERS/Yves Herman

By Robin Emmott and Gabriela Baczynska

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union’s aid chief called for more humanitarian access in Syria on Tuesday at an international conference meant to support the country’s ailing peace prospects, but one that quickly got overshadowed by a chemical attack inside Syria.

As Christos Stylianides spoke at the gathering in Brussels, a suspected gas attack hit the rebel-held Idlib province, killing at least 58 people, including children.

The United Nations’ Syria envoy said the ‘horrific’ attack came from the air and that the U.N. Security Council would meet to demand accountability.

The EU’s top diplomat Federica Mogherini said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad held “primary responsibility”.

“Chemical weapons are the worst of war crimes,” she said.

The Brussels conference comes as Syria’s civil war enters its seventh year, raging on in large part due to the inability of regional and global powers to agree on how to end it.

“Humanitarian access is at a new low due to continued deliberate obstruction by all parties to the conflict,” Stylianides told the two-day conference.

“You remember east Aleppo, where no aid could enter for months despite our collective calls,” he said, referring to the government siege of rebel-held areas last year. “More Aleppos are everywhere in Syria.”

The United Nations has appealed for $8 billion this year to deal with one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with millions of people displaced inside Syria and in neighboring countries.

Qatar and Kuwait joined the EU, Norway and the United Nations to organize the latest international effort following conferences in Berlin, London and Helsinki to raise funds.

The European Union has already pledged 1.2 billion euros ($1.28 billion) for 2017. Other governments will come under pressure to make good on promises made in February 2016 at the London conference, which raised $11 billion over four years.

EU LACKS HARD LEVERAGE

Speaking on the sidelines of the conference, Nancy Wilson, the head of Relief International, said problems getting access and providing supplies were chief obstacles on the ground.

“You can’t run a health clinic if you don’t have clean water and medical supplies,” she said. “Some kind of political solution that would cease the fighting would be the biggest challenge.”

The EU called the conference to show support for the peace process by bringing together prime ministers, foreign ministers and ambassadors from some 70 countries.

But the bloc’s role in international attempts at bringing the war to an end has been largely marginal, as highlighted again by the absence in Brussels of top-level officials from Russia, Turkey and the United States.

Five million Syrians have fled into Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and the European Union to escape the conflict among rebels, Islamist militants, government troops and foreign backers.

The future of Assad, backed by Russia and Iran, remains the key point of contention, blocking political talks.

The EU says it will not pay for any post-war reconstruction unless there is a “credible political transition” that would give the opposition, moderate rebels and the various ethnic and religious groups a say in Syria.

“We caution against paying for Assad’s destruction without a political end to the war,” said European lawmaker Mariejte Schaake of the Netherlands.

The initial U.S. and Russian backing for the U.N.-led process has waned as Moscow now sponsors separate talks with regional powers Iran and Turkey.

Washington is now also at odds with Europe – while they used to agree that Assad must go, President Donald Trump has made fighting terrorism his top priority instead.

(Additional reporting by Farah Salhi; Writing by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Andrew Bolton)

Dozens killed in suspected gas attack on Syrian rebel area

A Syrian man from Idlib is carried by Turkish medics wearing chemical protective suits to a hospital in the border town of Reyhanli in Hatay province, Turkey, April 4, 2017. Ferhat Dervisoglu/Dogan News Agency via REUTERS

By Ellen Francis

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A suspected Syrian government chemical attack killed at least 58 people, including 11 children, in the northwestern province of Idlib on Tuesday, a monitor, medics and rescue workers in the rebel-held area said.

A Syrian military source strongly denied the army had used any such weapons.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack, believed to have been carried out by Syrian army jets, caused many people to choke, and some had foam coming out of their mouths. All the children were under the age of eight.

“This morning, at 6:30 a.m., warplanes targeted Khan Sheikhoun with gases, believed to be sarin and chlorine,” said Mounzer Khalil, head of Idlib’s health authority. The attack had killed more than 50 people and wounded 300, he said.

“Most of the hospitals in Idlib province are now overflowing with wounded people,” Khalil told a news conference in Idlib.

The air strikes that hit the town of Khan Sheikhoun, in the south of rebel-held Idlib, killed at least 58 people, said the Observatory, a British-based war monitoring group.

Warplanes later struck near a medical point where victims of the attack were receiving treatment, the Observatory and civil defense workers said.

The civil defense, also known as the White Helmets – a rescue service that operates in opposition areas of Syria – said jets struck one of its centers in the area and the nearby medical point.

It would mark the deadliest chemical attack in Syria since sarin gas killed hundreds of civilians in Ghouta near the capital in August 2013. Western states said the Syrian government was responsible for the 2013 attack. Damascus blamed rebels.

MILITARY DENIES

The Syrian military source on Tuesday denied allegations that government forces had used chemical weapons.

The army “has not and does not use them, not in the past and not in the future, because it does not have them in the first place”, the source said.

A series of investigations by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found that various parties in the Syrian war have used chlorine, sulfur mustard gas and sarin.

A joint U.N.-OPCW report published last October said government forces used chlorine in a toxic gas attack in Qmenas in Idlib province in March 2015. An earlier report by the same team blamed Syrian government troops for chlorine attacks in Talmenes in March 2014 and Sarmin in March 2015. It also said Islamic State had used sulfur mustard gas.

The OPCW had no immediate comment on Tuesday.

France called for an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting about Tuesday’s suspected attack. Turkey, which backs the anti-Assad opposition, said the attack could derail Russian-backed diplomatic efforts to shore up a ceasefire.

“A new and particularly serious chemical attack took place this morning in Idlib province. The first information suggests a large number of victims, including children. I condemn this disgusting act,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said.

Reuters photographs showed people breathing through oxygen masks and wearing protection suits, while others carried the bodies of dead children, and corpses wrapped in blankets were lined up on the ground.

Activists in northern Syria circulated pictures on social media showing a purported victim with foam around his mouth, and rescue workers hosing down almost naked children squirming on the floor.

Most of the town’s streets had become empty, a witness said.

CEASEFIRE

Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said 15 people, mostly women and children, had been brought into Turkey.

An official at the Turkish Health Ministry had said earlier that Turkey’s disaster management agency was first “scanning those arriving for chemical weapons, then decontaminating them from chemicals” before they could be taken to hospitals.

The conflict pits President Bashar al-Assad’s government, helped by Russia and Iranian-backed militias, against a wide array of rebel groups, including some that have been supported by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies.

The Russian Defence Ministry said on Tuesday that Russian planes had not carried out air strikes on Khan Sheikhoun.

Syrian and Russian air strikes have battered parts of Idlib, according to the Observatory, despite a ceasefire that Turkey and Russia brokered in December.

Jets also struck the town of Salqin in the north of Idlib province on Tuesday, killing eight people, the monitor said.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the suspected attack, Turkish presidential sources said. They said the two leaders had also emphasized the importance of maintaining the ceasefire. Turkey’s foreign minister called the attack a crime against humanity.

The European Union’s top diplomat Federica Mogherini said: “Obviously there is a primary responsibility from the regime because it has the primary responsibility of protecting its people.”

TOXIC ARSENAL

Idlib province contains the largest populated area controlled by anti-Assad rebels – both nationalist Free Syrian Army groups and Islamist factions including the former al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

Idlib’s population has ballooned, with thousands of fighters and civilians shuttled out of Aleppo city and areas around Damascus that the government has retaken in recent months.

U.S. air strikes since January have also hit several areas in the rural province where jihadists have a powerful presence.

Following the 2013 attack, Syria joined the international Chemical Weapons Convention under a U.S.-Russian deal, averting the threat of U.S.-led military intervention.

Under the deal, Syria agreed to give up its toxic arsenal and surrendered 1,300 tonnes of toxic weapons and industrial chemicals to the international community for destruction.

U.N.-OPCW investigators found, however, that it continued to use chlorine, which is widely available and difficult to trace, in so-called barrel bombs, dropped from helicopters.

Although chlorine is not a banned substance, the use of any chemical is banned under 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, to which Syria is a member.

Damascus has repeatedly denied using such weapons during the six-year war, which has killed hundreds of thousands and created the world’s worst refugee crisis.

(Additional reporting by Laila Bassam in Beirut, Anthony Deutsch in Amsterdam, Ercan Gurses and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Daren Butler in Istanbul, Robin Emmott in Brussels, John Irish in Paris; Editing by Tom Perry and Alison Williams)