Tag Archives: killing dozens

Indonesia considers relocations after deadly volcanic eruption

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia’s volcanology agency is sending a team of researchers to the Mount Semeru volcano to identify areas too dangerous for villagers to stay after it erupted on Saturday, killing dozens of people on the slopes of Java island’s highest mountain.

In the days since the disaster, questions have been raised about the effectiveness of the disaster warning system and whether some villages should be moved.

Ediar Usman, an official from the Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (PVMBG), told a media briefing that some areas were potentially no longer safe to inhabit.

“It’s not impossible that a similar disaster could happen in the future,” he said.

Eko Budi Lelono, who heads the geological survey center, told Reuters the team would be sent this week and included experts from Yogyakarta who had studied the Merapi volcano near that city.

An estimated 8.6 million people in Indonesia live within 10 km of an active volcano, well within the range of deadly pyroclastic flows.

The magnitude of Saturday’s eruption caught many villagers off guard, with dozens unable to escape as the volcano projected an ash cloud kilometers into the sky, and sent dangerous pyroclastic flows into villages on the fertile slopes below.

At least 34 people were killed, with another 22 still missing, while thousands have been displaced, according to the disaster mitigation agency.

The eruption almost entirely buried some villages under meters of molten ash, with more than 100,000 homes partially damaged or destroyed.

Surveying the worst affected areas by helicopter on Tuesday, President Joko Widodo said that at least 2,000 homes would have to be rebuilt in different areas.

Semeru is one of more than 100 active volcanoes in Indonesia, which straddles the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” an area of high seismic activity that rests atop multiple tectonic plates.

(Reporting by Stanley Widianto; Writing by Kate Lamb; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Mozambicans return to uncertain future after Islamists pushed back

By Baz Ratner and Shafiek Tassiem

PALMA, Mozambique (Reuters) – Rwandan forces patrolled burnt-out streets once besieged by Islamist fighters in northern Mozambique, saying it was now safe for civilians to return to the gas-rich region, despite U.N. warnings of a continuing militant threat.

Soldiers laid out rifles and rocket launchers seized from the militants. The Rwandan military’s spokesman said they had already brought 25,000 people back home. “It is very safe for them to go back,” Ronald Rwivanga told Reuters.

In July, allied Rwandan-Mozambican troops moved in to recapture parts of northern Cabo Delgado – an area hosting $60 billion worth of gas projects that the militants have been attacking since 2017.

Mozambique’s government has said the fighters are on the run and some local officials have encouraged civilians to return, according to media reports.

But United Nations officials are not so sure.

A document compiled in September for U.N. agencies and other aid groups, seen by Reuters, said it was not clear whether militant capabilities had been much reduced. “Fighting continues in certain locations and civilian authorities have not been re-established,” it added.

On Thursday, children played in the streets of the town of Palma and vendors sold goods from kiosks, six months after the militants attacked the settlement, killing dozens and forcing tens of thousands to flee.

But 60km south in the port of Mocimboa da Praia – a hub needed for cargo deliveries for the gas projects – the streets were largely deserted, flanked by windowless, rubble-strewn buildings and overturned military vehicles.

Graffiti, using a local name for the militant group, reads: “If you want to make Al-Shabaab laugh, threaten them with death.”

“THE WAR THAT REMAINS IS HUNGER”

Aside from the Rwandans, a contingent of forces from the regional bloc, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is also patrolling northern Cabo Delgado.

Rwivanga said the Rwandans have been moving civilians back into the area they control – a region around a $20 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) project run by oil major TotalEnergies, which was forced to a halt by the Palma attack.

Yet security analysts say the Mozambican military deficiencies that allowed the insurgency to take hold in the north – including soldiers that are ill equipped, undisciplined and poorly paid – won’t be easily reversed.

Even with other forces there, they say, security is uncertain outside of small, heavily guarded areas.

Returnees, meanwhile, are more preoccupied with where the next meal is coming from. The World Food Program said this week that the first shipment of aid had reached Palma since the March attack.

“Now the situation is calm, the war that remains is hunger and lack of jobs,” Ibrahimo Suleman, 60, a resident who works for a kitchen-fitting company said.

Many others remain too afraid or unwilling to return, with almost 750,000 people still displaced as of this month, according to the International Organization of Migration.

(Reporting by Baz Ratner and Shafiek Tassiem in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, Manuel Mucari in Maputo and Emma Rumney in Johannesburg; Writing by Emma Rumney; Editing by Tim Cocks and Andrew Heavens)

Heartbroken and homeless: Algerian villagers grapples with wildfire aftermath

By Abdelaziz Boumzar

BEJAIA, Algeria (Reuters) – When Algeria’s deadly wildfires tore through the forest around their village, brothers Khelaf and Lyazid Tazibt could only hustle their families out of the door and abandon the home they shared to the flames.

The two men, both retired, and their wives and children, are now among hundreds of Algerians left homeless by the country’s worst fires in memory, which have burned swathes of the northeast over the past week, killing dozens of people.

“Like anyone else who saw those flames, it was impossible to do anything. We all gave up,” said Khelaf Tazibt, 55, standing in one of their single-story home’s damaged rooms, its walls cracked and black with soot.

He held up cracked plates and other belongings misshapen by the inferno. “The firefighters arrived a little late and there was nothing they could do,” he said.

His brother, Lyazid simply said “the fire reached the sky.”

Their village of Ait Sid Ali, in the northeastern Bejaia province, sits in rocky hills and was previously surrounded by forest. The Tazibt house was on the village edge, close to the trees and one of many there lost to the flames.

This month, a European Union atmosphere monitor said the Mediterranean had become a wildfire hotspot as massive blazes engulfed forests in Turkey, Greece and North Africa, aided by a heatwave.

The fire that suddenly engulfed Ait Sid Ali killed four people, they said. The surrounding hills are now a mass of scorched trunks but beyond the village another hillside is dark with smoke above the raging flames.

The two families are awaiting compensation and rehousing by the government, and in the meantime are receiving donations of food, medication and blankets from local aid organizations.

“We have lost everything,” said Lyazid Tazibt, overlooking the remains of the family home.

(Reporting by Abdelaziz Boumzar; Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)