Region

BEIRUT — Dozens of angry demonstrators attacked several banks in Beirut on Thursday after the Lebanese pound hit a record low, AFP journalists said, amid a deepening economic crisis.

Lebanon's cash-strapped banks have imposed strict restrictions on withdrawals, barring depositors from accessing their savings, especially those in US dollars.

The pound is trading at about 80,000 to the greenback on the black market versus 60,000 at the start of the month, according to exchange rate monitors.

On Thursday, around 50 protesters smashed the facades of four banks and burned car tyres in the central Beirut neighbourhood of Badaro, AFP journalists at the scene reported.

The attacks came after calls by the "Depositors' Outcry Association", a group that supports depositors' attempts to withdraw their money.

"They stole, seized and looted our money three years ago," said protester Pascal al-Raisi.

"There are owners of millions of dollars among us without even a penny in their pockets.

"There is no other solution. We will escalate until we regain our rights."

Depositors have carried out similar attacks in recent months to demand access to their savings from banks, which have repeatedly closed for days.

This month, the Association of Banks in Lebanon declared an open-ended strike, saying the crisis was affecting the entire financial system.

Lebanon's economic crisis has left many struggling to make ends meet in a country where poverty rates have reached 80 per cent of the population, according to the United Nations.

The pound's plunge has triggered a wave of price hikes including on fuel, food items and other basic goods.

Lebanon is being run by a caretaker government and is also without a president, as lawmakers have repeatedly failed to elect a successor to Michel Aoun, whose mandate expired at the end of October.

KAHRAMANMARAS, Turkey — Turkish rescuers on Thursday pulled a 17-year-girl from the rubble of last week's devastating earthquake, as hopes fade of finding more survivors.

Aleyna Olmez was rescued 248 hours after the 7.8-magnitude quake flattened entire cities, killing nearly 40,000 people across southeastern Turkey and parts of Syria.

"She looked to be in good health. She opened and closed her eyes," coal miner Ali Akdogan, who took part in the rescue effort, told AFP in Kahramanmaras, a city near the quake's epicentre. 

"We have been working here in this building for a week now... We came here with the hope of hearing sounds," he said. 

"We are happy whenever we find a living thing — even a cat." 

The girl's uncle tearfully hugged the rescuers one by one, saying: "We will never forget you."

But after the rescue, Turkish soldiers told the media and locals to leave the scene because teams were starting to pull corpses out of the rubble.

Officials and medics said 36,187 people had died in Turkey and 3,688 in Syria from the February 6 earthquake and aftershocks, bringing the official confirmed total to 39,875.

Turkey has suspended rescue operation in some reqions. The government in war-torn Syria has done the same in areas under its control.

ANTAKYA, Turkey — An aid convoy on Tuesday passed through a newly re-opened border crossing into rebel-held north Syria, where help has been slow to arrive since last week's earthquake, which killed nearly 40,000 people in the region.

Rare survivors were pulled from the debris eight days after the 7.8-magnitude quake struck Syria and Turkey, but the focus has switched from rescue to providing food and shelter to millions in need.

A caravan of 11 United Nations trucks entered Syria through the re-opened Bab Al Salama border point, after Damascus agreed to let the world body use the crossing for aid.

Before the earthquake struck, almost all the crucial humanitarian aid for the more than 4 million people living in rebel-controlled areas of northwest Syria was being delivered through just one crossing.

The trucks were loaded with essential humanitarian assistance, including shelter materials, mattresses, blankets and carpets, Paul Dillon, a spokesman for the UN's International Organisation for Migration (IOM), told AFP.

Activists and local emergency teams have decried the UN's slow response to the quake in rebel-held areas, contrasting it with the planeloads of humanitarian aid delivered to government-controlled airports.

The United States, which refuses ties with Syrian President Bashar Assad, called on both the government and rebels to work to allow in aid.

"Everyone should put aside their agendas and affiliations in service of one pursuit and one pursuit only, and that's addressing the humanitarian emergency — the humanitarian nightmare — that's unfolding in parts of northwest Syria," State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters in Washington.

The UN also launched an appeal for $397 million to cover three months of "life-saving relief" for victims in Syria and said it was close to a similar plan for Turkey.

"Millions of people across the region are struggling for survival, homeless and in freezing temperatures," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.

A handful of survivors have continued to be pulled from the rubble, including four on Tuesday, defying belief almost 200 hours after the disaster.

However, keeping them alive after being buried for so long is a battle.

“It’s a miracle to find a patient still alive under the rubble,” doctor Yilmaz Aydin told AFP.

“From now on, the survivors are likely to be in a more critical condition. The majority of them will need life-saving treatment,” said Aydin.

One survivor was 25-year-old Syrian woman Abir, who spent 180 hours trapped under the rubble.

“Her heart stopped two times but we managed to bring her back,” said doctor Nihat Mujdat Hokenek.

However, many are devastated that rescuers were unable to find even the remains of their loved ones.

“We have reached the point where we could simply be happy to find the corpses,” said a civil servant in Antakya who requested anonymity for fear of losing her job.

She lost her brother and her sister-and-law in the quake.

“We are so desperate that the hope of finding corpses is all we have,” she said.

‘Mind-boggling’

Fears have grown for survivors on both sides of the border, with the UN saying more than 7 million children have been negatively impacted between Syria and Turkey, and noting fears that “many thousands” more had died.

“It is tragically clear that numbers will continue to grow,” said James Elder, spokesman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF, adding that the final toll would be “mind-boggling”.

The confirmed death toll from the quake stands at 39,106 as officials and medics said 35,418 people had died in Turkey and at least 3,688 in Syria.

Following the disaster, residents faced the hard realities of surviving in cities turned to ruin in the middle of the winter freeze.

In Turkey’s Kahramanmaras, huge crowds depended on a single toilet that still functioned in a central mosque.

“I walk 5 kilometres every day to come here for a toilet. We cannot find any other place,” Erdal Lale, 44, told AFP.

The acrid smell of smoke from hundreds of fires lit to keep away the cold permeated much of Turkey’s disaster zone.

“We need to take showers. There is a need for washing machines for clothes,” Duz said.

MAARRAT MISRINE, Syria — In a hospital in earthquake-hit northwest Syria, eight-year-old Hanaa keeps asking for news of her family, unaware she is the sole survivor among her immediate relatives.

Her father, mother and four-year-old sister were among the nearly 40,000 people killed in the 7.8-magnitude quake that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6.

After years of war and displacement in Syria, the disaster orphaned many children when their families were lost under the rubble.

“She keeps asking for her father, her mother and her sister,” said Abdullah Sherif, Hanaa’s uncle, at Maarrat Misrine hospital in Syria’s north-western Idlib province.

“We have not dared to tell her the truth yet.”

Hanaa was trapped for 33 hours under the rubble of her collapsed building in the border town of Harim, before she was pulled out and rushed to the hospital about 25 kilometres away.

When she got there, she was “in a critical condition”, her doctor Bassel Staif said. “She suffered severe dehydration, having been under the rubble without food or water and in the cold weather.”

Hanaa’s condition has since stabilised, and she sometimes smiles despite the injuries on her face.

But her left arm, which is in a cast, was crushed during the quake, Staif said, noting that his team is doing its best to save it.

“She has now left the intensive care unit, her condition is stable. But she is at risk of having an arm amputated.”

Trauma on top of trauma’

In the hospital room packed with Valentine’s Day balloons, Hanaa’s uncle remains by her side. But he fears her condition will only worsen when she learns of her family’s fate.

The little girl has only her grandparents and uncles to raise her in this rebel-held region, home to some 4 million people, many of them displaced from other parts of war-torn Syria.

Last week’s quake has affected more than 7 million children, including 2.5 million in Syria alone, according to James Elder, spokesman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF.

He says the disaster has piled more misery on Syrian children who have only witnessed tragedy in their lives because of the war that broke out more than a decade ago.

Every child under the age of 12 “has known nothing but conflict, violence or displacement”, said Elder. “Some children have been displaced six or seven times.”

“For many of these children... this is trauma on top of trauma.”

Samah Hadid of the Norwegian Refugee Council has also warned that children are at “grave psychological risk due to the scale of the shock”.

‘We could only hear screams’ 

Three-year-old Arslan was the sole survivor from his family after their building in Harim was one of least 35 destroyed.

His uncle, Ezzat Hamdi, says rescuers kept digging for three days to find the bodies of Arslan’s father, mother and siblings.

“We found the father’s body hugging the boy,” said Hamdi, 30, adding that the mother’s body was found two metres away.

The little boy has since been kept in intensive care, with Hamdi watching over him.

“The child’s lower limbs were crushed” and he suffered internal damage, said doctor Omar Al Ali of the children’s hospital in Sarmada.

For Obada Zikra, a member of the White Helmets rescue group that operates in Syria’s rebel-held areas, the first hours of the quake disaster were the most agonising.

“We could only hear the screams and moans of children,” he said, noting the brief bursts of joy whenever rescuers found a child alive.

“We have pulled out many children who are still alive, but also dead ones,” he said.

“The children of our region have lived through many tragedies. We hope that they will lead different lives... and enjoy the support that any child in the world gets.” 

LAGASH, Iraq — Archaeologists in southern Iraq have uncovered the remains of a tavern dating back nearly 5,000 years they hope will illuminate the lives of ordinary people in the world’s first cities.

The US-Italian team made the find in the ruins of ancient Lagash, northeast of the modern city of Nasiriyah, which was already known to have been one of the first urban centres of the Sumerian civilisation of ancient Iraq.

The joint team from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Pisa discovered the remains of a primitive refrigeration system, a large oven, benches for diners and around 150 serving bowls.

Fish and animal bones were found in the bowls, alongside evidence of beer drinking, which was widespread among the Sumerians.

“So we’ve got the refrigerator, we’ve got the hundreds of vessels ready to be served, benches where people would sit... and behind the refrigerator is an oven that would have been used... for cooking food,” Project Director Holly Pittman told AFP.

“What we understand this thing to be is a place where people — regular people — could come to eat and that is not domestic,” she said.

“We call it a tavern because beer is by far the most common drink, even more than water, for the Sumerians,” she said, noting that in one of the temples excavated in the area “there was a beer recipe that was found on a cuneiform tablet”.

‘Regular people’ 

The world’s first cities developed in what is now southern Iraq, after agricultural surpluses from the domestication of the first crops allowed the emergence of new social classes not engaged directly in food production.

The Lagash area, close to the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, was dubbed the “garden of the gods” by the ancients for its fertility and gave rise to a string of Sumerian cities dating back to the early dynastic period.

“Lagash was one of the important cities of southern Iraq,” Iraqi archaeologist Baker Azab Wali told AFP, after working with the US-Italian team on the site.

“Its inhabitants depended on agriculture, livestock, fishing, but also on the exchange of goods,” he said.

Pittman said the team was eager to learn more about the occupations of the people who used the tavern in its heyday in around 2700BC to throw new light on the social structure of the first cities.

Detailed analysis would need to be carried out on the samples taken during the excavations the team completed in November.

“There is so much that we do not know about this early period of the emergence of cities and that is what we are investigating,” she said.

“We hope to be able to characterise the neighbourhoods and the kinds of occupation... of the people that lived in this big city who were not the elite,” she added.

“Most of the work done at the other sites focuses on kings and priests. And that is all very important but the regular people are also important.”

ALEPPO, Syria — A Saudi Arabian plane carrying aid to quake-hit Syria landed in second city Aleppo on Tuesday, the first in more than a decade of war, a transport ministry official told AFP.

Planeloads of foreign aid have landed in Syria since a 7.8-magnitude quake struck the war-torn country and neighbouring Turkey killing more than 35,000 people.

"This is the first plane from Saudi Arabia to land on Syrian territory in more than 10 years," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to speak to the press.

The Saudi plane landed at Aleppo International Airport carrying 35 tonnes of food aid, state news agency SANA reported.

Two more Saudi planes are scheduled to land Wednesday and Thursday, another transport ministry official, Suleiman Khalil, told AFP.

The last such flight landed in Syria in February 2012.

After more than a decade of war, President Bashar Assad's government remains a pariah in the West, complicating international efforts to assist those affected by the quake.

The Arab League suspended Syria in 2011 and some Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, have severed ties.

Saudi Arabia broke off relations with President Bashar Assad's government in 2012 and backed rebels in earlier stages of the war.

Riyadh has pledged aid to both rebel-held and government-controlled areas of the country.

On Saturday, it sent a first aid convoy of 11 trucks to rebel-held northwestern Syria, loaded with 104 tonnes of food and tarpaulins, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said.

There was no direct contact with the Assad government, an official at King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre told AFP earlier.

More than 3,600 people have been killed by the quake in Syria alone, according to the government and emergency services in the rebel-held northwest.

The mostly government-controlled province of Aleppo was badly hit, with more than 200,000 people left homeless, according to the World Health Organisation.

Since 2011, the conflict in Syria has killed nearly half-a-million people and forced around half of the country’s pre-war population from their homes, with many taking refuge in Turkey.

Even before Monday’s earthquake, the majority of the population was in need of humanitarian assistance. The latest disaster has only piled on more misery.

ABU DHABI — With the launch of the Middle East's most advanced marine research vessel “Jaywun”, deployed with state-of-the-art technology to help combat climate change, the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi (EAD) is on a mission to further strengthen the UAE’s position on the global research map and intensify climate action.

Through a series of projects, initiatives and policies, Abu Dhabi is gearing up to realise sustainable economic development, while simultaneously protecting the emirate’s rich environment and biodiversity.

Environmental preservation tops national agenda

“Since the foundation of the UAE, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan placed the preservation of the environment and biodiversity at the top of country’s agenda. The environment has always been at the heart of our policies and development process,” Ahmed Al Hashemi, Executive Director, Terrestrial and Marine Biodiversity Sector at EAD, told The Jordan Times in a recent meeting.

 “We have always been keen on striking a balance between economic growth and development and preserving sustainability. Now we are deploying the latest technologies, including the recent launch of the state-of-the-art research vessel, to help us make better-informed decisions to ensure the environment is preserved, while taking into account sustained economic growth,” he added.

Advanced research vessel

Abu Dhabi recently launched the Middle East's most advanced marine research vessel to aid efforts safeguarding marine life in the emirate amid the diverse ramifications of climate change, Al Hashemi said.

The name of the vessel, “Jaywun”, symbolises one of the finest and most valuable types of pearls. The ship will help preserve the emirate’s rich, unique and diverse marine environment and biodiversity, he said.

The vessel, which can accommodate about 30 people, is equipped with the latest research equipment, including six laboratories for studying samples. 

It also includes a remotely-operated submarine, which will operate in the territorial waters of the UAE in the Arabian Gulf and the Sea of Oman, and will allow the agency to complete its research on the marine environment and fish populations in waters over 10m deep.

The agency will also use the Jaywun to monitor and preserve fish stocks and marine biodiversity and help ignite a passion for oceanography and fisheries studies in the Arabian Gulf among young Emirati researchers. 

Freire Shipbuilding Company in Vigo, Spain, developed the vessel under the supervision of the Abu Dhabi Ship Building Company, with the support of a team from EAD.

“The sea is very important for us in Abu Dhabi…The location of the sea is unique and although the Arabian Gulf is the hottest sea in the world, we have a wide diversity of species, including coral, that thrive here in spite of the high salinity and hot water,” Al Hashemi said.

Much of the Arabian Gulf is still unexplored. The research vessel will explore the sea and marine life to come up with solutions to enhance the ecosystem, he noted, adding that the ship is a main initiative in fighting against and adapting to climate change.

“This research vessel will help enhance our national capacities as we are collaborating with top research centres and researchers from across the world. We have already signed several MoUs with many universities to ensure that students are involved and benefit from this experience,” he added.

Banning unsustainable fishing practices

In its efforts to preserve the environment and marine life, the UAE has banned some unsustainable fishing practices which had an impact on marine species, particularly fish stock.

“One of the challenges we faced is the low fish stock. This is why we brought the ship. We had studies in the past based on studies from 1978. We banned some practices, and after that we enhanced the reserve. We noticed a drop in the reserve, and a huge drop in fish reserves in the sea. The fishermen always complained because they used to go far areas and stay longer hours to be able to fish, but this is food security we are talking about,” Al Hashemi added.

“Then we took several firm measures, including banning unsustainable fishing practices that use nets and other traps for the fish locally known as Gargoor,” he noted, adding that following the ban, data showed that fish stocks rebounded.

The coastal and marine areas of Abu Dhabi, located on the southern border of the Arabian Gulf, are considered “a hotspot” for biodiversity, housing various habitats that support a wide range of marine species, including large fish. The agency has worked to improve the condition of deteriorating fish stocks that had been depleted by up to 85 per cent, according to its studies and surveys, he said.

Implementing EAD's guidance in this context helped protect fish stocks, with data showing that Abu Dhabi is on track to achieve its goal of sustainable fisheries by 2030. An improvement has also been achieved in the sustainable fishing index for three consecutive years, rising from 8.9 per cent in 2018 to 62.3 per cent by the end of 2021. The agency will continue working to ensure the recovery of fisheries, while achieving a level of sustainable fishing.

Efforts made by the agency to establish and manage natural reserves through the Sheikh Zayed Protected Area Network, which comprises six marine reserves representing 14 per cent of the emirate’s marine environment, have also contributed to preserving biodiversity in Abu Dhabi.

Drones to plant mangrove seeds

The UAE is also working on adopting and intensifying nature-based solutions.

One project that falls under this strategy is the planting of mangrove seeds using drones, an initiative that Al Hashemi said the emirate will intensify as of this year.

“These trees have been found to play an important role as carbon sinks. In the last 10 years, we have planted more than 15 million mangrove trees and this year, we plan to expand and intensify the implementation of the project,” he added.

Planting mangrove seeds using drones supports the Abu Dhabi Mangrove Initiative, which was announced in February 2021 during Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge’s, landmark visit to the UAE, where he met with Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed, Member of Abu Dhabi Executive Council and Chairman of Abu Dhabi Executive Office, at Jubail Mangrove Park.

This initiative, which is being implemented by EAD with local, regional and international partners, supports Abu Dhabi’s ambitious plans to make the emirate a global hub for mangrove conservation research and innovation as the trees sequester carbon, a key strategy in fighting climate change.

The initiative supports the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment’s target, announced during COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, which unveiled a nationwide plan to plant 100 million mangroves by 2030.

EAD is the first organisation to utilise and plant mangroves on a large-scale, utilising ecological principles enhanced by drones. The planting of one million seeds follows a successful initial phase implemented by EAD in partnership with ENGIE, the global energy company, and Distant Imagery, a drone engineering solutions company.

This initial phase focused on planting mangroves via drones in 2020, with up to a 48 per cent success rate. EAD then scaled up the project, with one million mangroves planted via drones at different locations around Al Mirfa, in Al Dhafra region.

Using drones to plant mangroves has several advantages, as the environmental footprint of the methodology is low since it removes the need for intense labour and sapling transportation. It is also cost-effective, as it reduces the overall price of mangrove planting, eliminates the need for mangrove nurseries and associated costs and facilitates reaching remote and difficult areas. The project is also running a trial on incorporating machine learning for future monitoring phases.

“This project helps preserve the environment and saves efforts and resources and the success rate of the project is on the rise,” he added.

.