Tag Archives: Displaced

U.S. backed forces appeal for aid for hundreds fleeing IS

Fighters of the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) carry their weapons as they walk in the western rural area of Manbij, in Aleppo

By Rodi Said and Lisa Barrington

NEAR MANBIJ, Syria/BEIRUT (Reuters) – – U.S.-backed forces waging an offensive against the Islamic State-held city of Manbij in northern Syria appealed for international assistance for those fleeing the fighting on Tuesday as the forces tightened their encirclement of the city.

The SDF push comes at the same time as other enemies of Islamic State, including the governments of Syria and Iraq, also launched major offensives on other fronts, in what amounts to the most sustained pressure on the militants since they proclaimed their caliphate in 2014.

The Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance launched the advance two weeks ago to seize Islamic State’s last territory on the Syria-Turkey border and cut the self-declared caliphate off from the world.

“In the areas we control we have tried to take care of the needs of the internally displaced persons. But we are not able to cover their needs,” Sharfan Darwish of the SDF-allied Manbij Military Council told Reuters in Beirut by telephone.

“The international community must turn their attention to the people which have been liberated from Daesh (Islamic State),” he said, adding that there were no international humanitarian organizations working in the area.

Darwish said the Manbij civil council was bringing supplies from the northern, Syrian YPG militia-controlled city of Kobani to displaced persons, but this was not enough.

The SDF is a U.S.-backed group formed last year which includes the powerful Kurdish YPG militia and Arab fighters.

They are one of a number of sides fighting in Syria’s complex civil war now in its sixth year. The conflict pits rebels against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Syrian government forces and some rebel groups are also fighting separate battles against Islamic State. The SDF has largely avoided fighting against government forces and focuses on fighting Islamic State.

BRAVING SNIPER FIRE

Around 1,100 people have already fled Islamic State-held Manbij this week into SDF-held territory, braving Islamic State sniper fire on the city’s edges, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Many who had fled the city told Reuters that Islamic State fighters were trying to prevent people leaving. One person told Reuters Islamic State was arresting people suspected of collaborating with the SDF.

Having seized control of the last route into Manbij on Friday, the SDF has yet to enter the town.

“We are closing in on Manbij,” Darwish said, adding that fighting continues on the city’s outskirts.

The Observatory said the SDF has taken about 105 villages and farms around Manbij since the start of the operation.

Since the start of the offensive on May 31, 49 civilians have died as a result of the U.S.-led coalition air strikes in and around Manbij and 19 civilians had been killed by Islamic State, the Observatory said.

It also said at least 246 Islamic State fighters and 29 SDF fighters have been killed.

Syrian government and allied forces are trying to advance against the Islamic State south-west of their de facto capital in Syria, Raqqa. Fighting on Monday between Ithriya and al Tabqa killed 11 government and 17 Islamic State, the Observatory said.

Syrian state media broadcast pictures of bloodied bodies lying in the desert sand which it said showed 16 Islamic State fighters killed by government and allied forces in the fighting.

Syrian government and allied forces have been supported by Russian air power since September last year, an intervention which helped turn the tide of the war in Assad’s favor.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington in Beirut and Rodi Said near Manbij, Syria, editing by Peter Millership)

People uprooted within states by conflict hits record in 2015

Children ride on the back of a truck loaded with water jerrycans at a camp for internally displaced people in the Dhanah area of the

By Megan Rowling

BARCELONA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The number of people uprooted inside their own countries by war and violence hit a record 40.8 million in 2015, with Yemen recording the most cases of newly displaced, an international aid group said on Wednesday.

Globally there were 8.6 million fresh cases of people fleeing conflict last year within borders, an average of 24,000 a day, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) said in a report. More than half of those were in the Middle East.

Some 2.2 million people in Yemen, or 8 percent of its population, were newly displaced in 2015, largely the result of Saudi-led air strikes and an economic blockade imposed on civilians, the report said.

IDMC said the number of people forced from their homes by conflict but staying in their own countries was twice those who have become refugees by crossing international borders.

“The world is in a tremendous displacement crisis that is relentlessly building year after year, and now too many places have the perfect storm of conflict and/or disasters,” said Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which runs IDMC.

“We have to find ways to protect people from these horrendous forces of both nature and the man-made ones.”

The U.N. refugee agency has said the number of people forcibly displaced worldwide was likely to have “far surpassed” a record 60 million in 2015, including 20 million refugees, driven by the Syrian war and other drawn-out conflicts.

The IDMC report said displacement in the Middle East and North Africa had “snowballed” since the Arab Spring uprisings that began in 2010 and the rise of the Islamic State militant group, which is waging war in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.

“What has really led to the spike we have seen most recently has been the attack on civilians – indiscriminate bombing and air strikes, across Syria but also Yemen,” said Alexandra Bilak, IDMC’s interim director. “People have nowhere to go.”

DISASTER PREVENTION

Globally, there were 19.2 million new cases of people forced from their homes by natural disasters in 2015, the vast majority of them due to extreme weather such as storms and floods, IDMC said.

In Nepal alone, earthquakes in April and May uprooted 2.6 million people.

Egeland said many countries, such as Cuba, Vietnam and Bangladesh, had improved their record on preventing and preparing for natural disasters.

“But in Asia I would say, and to some extent Latin America, still too little is done to meet the growing strength of the forces of nature fueled by climate change,” he added.

The former U.N. aid chief urged this month’s World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul to focus on building resilience to natural disasters, and finding ways to avert conflicts and protect civilians in war.

IDMC’s Bilak said political action was needed to stop more people being forced from their homes, and staying displaced for long periods.

“The numbers are increasing every year, which clearly shows that the solutions to displacement are not being found,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Sudan and South Sudan have featured in the list of the 10 largest displaced populations every year since 2003, the report noted.

“People are not returning, they are not locally integrating where they have found refuge, and they are certainly not being resettled somewhere else,” Bilak said.

(Reporting by Megan Rowling; Additional reporting by Stine Jacobsen in Oslo; Editing by Katie Nguyen. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Yemen Families Uprooted By War

A girl holds her sister outside their family's hut at the Shawqaba camp

By Abduljabbar Zeyad

HAJJAH, Yemen (Reuters) – They live in scruffy tents or mud huts on dry, stony ground. Children play with what they have – a rubber tire will do. Medical treatment is hard to come by for young and old alike.

In northwest Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Middle East, families uprooted by the war have been stuck in camps for the past year.

Around 400 of them now reside in the Shawqaba camp in Hajjah province, which borders Saudi Arabia. A visiting Reuters photographer has captured their life in a Wider Image photo essay found at http://reut.rs/226i5tr .

When fighting between Saudi forces and Houthi rebels began in March 2015, these refugees were forced to leave their villages in al-Dhahir and Shada districts in neighboring Saada province as Saudi-led warplanes targeted Houthi positions.

Residents and human rights groups say some of the strikes destroyed homes and damaged farmlands. The coalition has acknowledged mistakes in air operations in Yemen but denies Houthi allegations that its forces strike civilian targets.

A few months later, the place they sought refuge, al-Mazraq camp near the border city of Harad, also in Hajjah, was bombarded.

Families moved further inland to the arid Shawqaba camp that lacks the most basic services. Residents call home poorly build huts that protect them neither from summer heat nor winter cold.

Amal Jabir, 10, standing outside her family’s hut, says there’s only one thing she wishes for.

“I want this war to be over, to return home and finish my studies,” she says.

Many children suffer from a lack of nutrition and health services. Muhammad, 11, is waiting for treatment of his fractured leg.

Elderly people with diabetes and heart conditions complain of a lack of medicine – and the high prices when it is available.

Yemen has been in a civil war for more than a year between supporters of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and the Iran-allied Houthi group that has sucked in a Saudi-led alliance and caused a major humanitarian crisis.

U.N.-sponsored peace talks are scheduled to start in Kuwait on April 18. The two sides in the conflict have confirmed a truce starting at midnight on April 10.

(Reporting by Khaled Abdullah; Writing by Brian McGee; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)