[wvns] Cholera outbreak in Baghdad
U.N. raises new concern about possible cholera outbreak in Baghdad
The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
www.uruknet.info?p=38698
BAGHDAD: The United Nations raised new concern Wednesday about a
possible cholera outbreak in Baghdad ahead of the rainy season, saying
the capital accounts for 79 percent of all new cases despite a
national decline.
The Iraqi Health Ministry reported that two boys in a Baghdad
orphanage died of cholera earlier this month and six other children
there had been diagnosed with the disease, which was first detected
Aug. 14 in the northern city of Kirkuk.
The U.N. Children's Fund said 101 cases had been recorded in the
capital, most in the past three weeks, making it the source of 79
percent of all new cases. It said no single source for the outbreak
had been identified, but the main Shiite enclave of Sadr City was
among the areas hardest hit.
"While national caseloads are declining, we are increasingly concerned
about a possible outbreak in Baghdad," UNICEF said in a statement.
"UNICEF is working with WHO to try to limit the spread in the capital
and treat the sick as Iraq's rainy season sets in."
The humanitarian organization said it was providing oral rehydration
salts and water purification tablets for families, as well as jerry
cans at water distribution points. It also was transporting 180,000
liters (47,552 gallons) of safe water per day to Baghdad's most
affected districts, including schools and other institutions.
UNICEF said the recent case in the orphanage "raises concerns for all
children in institutions and schools in Baghdad," and it issued an
urgent appeal to "Iraq's government to clean water storage tanks in
all institutions as one preventive measure."
The World Health Organization has confirmed more than 3,300 cholera
cases in Iraq and at least 14 deaths from the acute and rapid
dehydration it causes.
The outbreak has now spread to half of the country's 18 provinces.
Cholera is a gastrointestinal disease typically spread by drinking
contaminated water. It can cause severe diarrhea that, in extreme
cases, can lead to fatal dehydration. It is preventable by treating
drinking water with chlorine and improving hygiene conditions.
"In general, Iraq's water and sanitation networks are in a critical
condition," UNICEF said, estimating that only one in three Iraqi
children can rely on a safe water source, particularly in Baghdad and
southern cities.
===
Iraqis return home 'in thousands'
BBC NEWS
2007/11/21
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7105216.stm
An estimated 1,000 people a day are returning across Iraq's
borders having previously moving abroad to escape the violence, Iraqi
authorities say.
Most of the returnees are coming from Syria - and very few from
Jordan, where better-off refugees tended to go.
An improving security situation - but also the lack of job
opportunities for Iraqis in Syria - may account for the move,
correspondents say.
However, at least five people died in a bombing in Ramadi on
Wednesday.
A suicide bomber slammed a vehicle into a courthouse compound,
police said.
The attack came as a sudden return to violence in a region which
has become markedly more peaceful since Sunni tribesmen joined forces
with the US military to tackle al-Qaeda militants last year.
Violence falls
Over 4.4m Iraqis are thought to have been displaced by violence
since the US-led invasion of 2003 - but a growing trickle of those who
fled the country are now coming back.
Iraq's ministry of migration told the BBC about 1,000 people were
returning every day.
WHERE IRAQIS HAVE FLED TO
Syria: 1,400,000
Jordan: 750,000
Gulf states: 200,000
Egypt: 100,000
Iran: 54,000
Lebanon: 40,000
Turkey: 10,000
Internally displaced: At least 2,000,000
Source: UNHCR (October 2007)
The UN's refugee agency, the UNHCR, estimates about 45,000 Iraqis
returned from Syria in October - the first month of the school year.
One factor in their return is likely to be a sharp and sustained
drop in all kinds of violence, particularly in parts of the capital
Baghdad, following a US-Iraqi military "surge".
But the stream of returnees from Syria is not being matched by
return traffic from Jordan, where there may be as many as a million
Iraqi refugees.
That is probably because those in Syria are poorer, so their
savings have run out more quickly, says the BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad.
Incentives
Syrian authorities, who have seen the country's population swollen
by up to 10% by the flood of Iraqi refugees, have begun imposing visa
requirements.
After all this effort to fix the house I hope there will be no
more fighting. But I think the violence will be back again
Abu Naseem
Retired policeman who has returned home to Baghdad
Iraqi authorities, for their part, have been providing incentives
for refugees to return, such as free bus rides from Syria.
They have also tried to encourage those Iraqis displaced inside
the country - who constitute about half the total - to return to their
homes by offering families grants of $800 to do so.
So far 4,700 families have taken up the offer with another 8,500
registered for them.
But not all the returnees are confident the security improvement
is permanent.
Watching decorators paint the home he has returned to in east
Baghdad from Syria, retired policeman Abu Naseem told Reuters news
agency: "After all this effort to fix the house I hope there will be
no more fighting.
"But I think the violence will be back again."
===
Helicopter Gunfire Kills Iraqi Civilians, Days After Sadr City Battle
By Andrew E. Kramer
The New York Times
Wednesday 24 October 2007
Baghdad - Gunfire from an American helicopter killed 11 people,
including women and children, after it came under fire north of
Baghdad on Tuesday, according to a statement by the military. The
episode was the second this week in which multiple Iraqi deaths
resulted from a United States combat action.
The Iraqi police and witnesses put the toll higher, at 16 dead,
and recounted a confusing scene in which local people were trying to
help a wounded man who was apparently an insurgent as an American
helicopter buzzed overhead.
According to Mohanad Hamid Muhsin, a 14-year-old who was wounded
in the leg, the insurgent fired a machine gun at a helicopter around
sunrise in a rural area near the city of Tikrit. The helicopter
unleashed a barrage of gunfire in return, hitting the man who had
fired the machine gun, he said.
"The locals went to check if he was dead and gathered around him,"
Mohanad said of the insurgent, "but the helicopter opened fire again
and killed some of the locals and wounded others." When another group
tried to carry the wounded and dead to houses to provide first aid,
Mohanad said, the helicopter shot at four houses, killing and wounding
more people.
In its statement, the United States military said that "a known
member of an I.E.D. cell was among the 11 killed during the multiple
engagements," using the abbreviation for improvised explosive device.
The statement said an additional four "military-age males" were
among the dead and said that five women and one child were also
killed. The statement said the helicopter had been fired at from a house.
"I lost two of my brothers and my sister, who was a college
student," Mohanad said in a telephone interview from a hospital in
Tikrit where the wounded were taken.
A local police official, meanwhile, said that 16 people, including
six women and three children, were killed and that an additional 14
were wounded.
The shooting took place two days after American soldiers killed 49
people in a gun battle on Sunday in Sadr City, the sprawling Shiite
neighborhood in eastern Baghdad. The military said no civilians were
killed, while a Shiite citizens' council and other Shiite groups said
innocent bystanders died. On Monday, Iraqi government and American
military officials agreed to form a joint committee to investigate.
Also Tuesday, Sunni tribal sheiks who have allied with the United
States played host to an improbable military parade, with a band and
soldiers in spit-shined boots, down a main street in the city of
Ramadi in Anbar Province, though with an extensive American military
presence in the area.
The parade, which was led by children waving flowers and Iraqi
flags, would have been unthinkable amid the insurgent violence in
Ramadi a year ago, American commanders who attended said.
The sheiks' movement, the Anbar Awakening Council, has used tribal
ties to draw former insurgents into the government police force, while
helping United States soldiers identify remaining militants. In
Ramadi, United States patrols have not been targeted in the city since
May, American commanders said.
The parade was a response to one held last year in Ramadi by the
Mujahedeen Shura Council, an insurgent group linked to Al Qaeda in
Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni insurgent group that American
intelligence officials say has foreign leadership.
The parade on Tuesday formally commemorated the end of the 40-day
period of mourning after the death of Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh
al-Rishawi, the leader of the Anbar Awakening Council, who was killed
shortly after meeting President Bush in Anbar in September. His
brother, Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha, took over as leader of the group.
Sheik Abu Risha responded Tuesday to an audiotape of the Qaeda
leader, Osama bin Laden, that was broadcast on Al Jazeera on Monday.
The tape admonished Sunni Muslims in Iraq for allowing divisions
within their ranks in the struggle against the United States,
according to SITE, a group that monitors extremist Islamic groups.
"We invite bin Laden to tell us who his people are," Mr. Abu Risha
said. "Let them come out, and we will fight them. Here I am. I am
willing to lead the fight."
--------
Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting from Baghdad, Qais Mizher from
Ramadi and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Salahuddin.
===
US Airstrike Kills at Least 11 in Iraq
By Doug Smith
The Los Angeles Times
Wednesday 24 October 2007
The target was a bomb-planting cell, but villagers say farmers were
hit. Toddlers and teenagers also died, they say.
Baghdad - A U.S. airstrike left at least 11 dead in a village in
northern Iraq on Tuesday, heightening an ongoing Iraqi backlash over
the civilian toll of American military actions.
The military said in a statement that a helicopter fired on a
group of men believed to be a cell that places roadside bombs. The men
then took refuge in a nearby house and continued to engage U.S.
troops, the military said.
The statement said 11 Iraqis were killed, including a militant
known to be a member of a bomb cell.
Residents in the village of Mukaisheefa, about 80 miles north of
Baghdad, contested the military account, saying 15 people were killed
and that the men were farmers irrigating their fields in the
pre-daylight hours.
Abdul Wahab Ahmed, a neighbor, said the dead included two toddlers
and four teenagers. Five were women, he said.
Ahmed said two of three farmers killed were in the field, and
another, who was injured, went back to the village of several dozen
houses. As neighbors gathered around the man's house, jets made two
bombing runs, Ahmed said.
A member of the Iraqi parliament who has previously criticized
U.S. military tactics said Tuesday's attack was further evidence of
the misuse of air power.
"That has been repeated many times," said Mahmoud Othman, who had
spoken out in parliament Monday for restrictions on the American
forces. "They may kill some terrorists but they kill innocent people
with them."
Parliament is divided over what position to take on the annual
United Nations Security Council reauthorization of the U.S. presence
in Iraq. Some, particularly moderate Sunni Arab leaders, view the
American forces as crucial to the country's future, but many Shiite
Muslims resent American incursions in their neighborhoods.
The debate Monday came a day after a U.S. raid on a Shiite
neighborhood in Baghdad in which Iraqi officials said 13 civilians
were killed. The U.S. military said the strike in Sadr City killed 49
"criminals" and it was unaware of any civilian casualties.
The statement released by the military after Tuesday's fighting
dealt elliptically with the question of civilian casualties. While
characterizing one of the dead as a militant, it described four others
as "military-age males." It said the group included "suspected IED
[roadside bomb] emplacers," but did not say how many.
Ahmed, the local resident, said the helicopter opened fire on
three men who were working on their farm about two miles from the
highway that passes near the village between the cities of Samarra and
Tikrit, too far to have been planting a bomb on the route.
"I know all the men," Ahmed said. "They have nothing to do with
these things. They were very good people."
Army Maj. Margaret Kageleiry, a U.S. military spokeswoman for
northern Iraq, declined to provide further detail. The military
statement said the engagement was under review.
The U.S. military and Iraqi witnesses frequently contradict each
other when discussing clashes that involve Iraqi deaths, and it is
difficult in many cases to independently confirm or debunk the accounts.
Elsewhere on Tuesday, four people were killed in a battle with
gunmen who attacked a patrol, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior
said. Two of the dead were police officers.
Four bodies, apparent victims of execution, were found in the capital.
Police confirmed the kidnapping Monday of an Iraqi broadcast
journalist in northeast Baghdad. The driver of longtime news reporter
Jinan Ubaidi was found dead, but there was no further information on
her fate.
Police in the city of Fallouja, 35 miles west of Baghdad, found 16
men bound, blindfolded and shot to death in a deserted building
Monday, police Lt. Col. Jubair Dulaimi said Tuesday. There was no
apparent motive, he said.
--------
doug.smith @ latimes.com
Times staff writers Wail Alhafith, Saif Hameed and Raheem Salman
in Baghdad and special correspondents in Samarra and Baghdad
contributed to this report.
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