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GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — Slumped in a hospital bed, his face obscured by an oxygen mask in an intensive care unit for coronavirus patients in the Gaza Strip, Hussein Al Hajj said he wanted to talk.

“Vaccinations are essential, but I’m going to have to survive the virus before getting vaccinated,” the 71-year-old retired Palestinian teacher told AFP through strained breaths.

In Gaza, a Palestinian territory under strict Israeli blockade since 2007, the pandemic has been defined by contrast.

Through its early months roughly a year ago, the enclave’s Hamas Islamist rulers largely succeeded in limiting significant viral spread.

Access to Gaza was already restricted through Israeli and Egyptian controlled crossings, and Hamas imposed strict quarantines on everyone who sought entry.

But in August the first cases were recorded outside quarantine centres, raising fears of catastrophe given Gaza’s weak health infrastructure.

Now, as Israel broadly re opens thanks to a world-leading vaccination effort, Gaza’s vulnerable health system is overwhelmed.

Hajj was admitted to a Turkish funded hospital, built in 2017 on land where polluted stagnant water often pools, which was previously used as a training ground for Hamas’s armed wing.

The white-haired Hajj was among a group of mostly elderly, male patients curled up on beds and intubated under the care of an overstretched medical team.

“My wife and I contracted corona. She stayed in quarantine at home, but I have lung problems, so first I was brought to the hospital, then here,” he said in a whisper, referring to the makeshift ICU.

“It’s a question of life and death. Things can deteriorate at any moment.”

Full beds 

Health authorities in Gaza say the situation turned more dire following the emergence last month of the more contagious British coronavirus variant, which fuelled a surge in cases among younger Palestinians.

“The situation is critical,” said Rami Al Abadelah, director of infections diseases at Gaza’s health ministry.

Last week the enclave of some two million people registered a pandemic record of 23 deaths in a single day.

Around 850 Gazans have died from COVID-19, while the territory is expected to cross the 100,000 case threshold within days.

The resource-strapped Islamist authorities are conducting about 3,200 tests a day and the 36 per cent positive test rate is among the highest in the world, according to the World Health Organisation.

“Officially we have about 1,000 [new] cases a day, but it’s probably 5,000 or more because people don’t go to the hospital or call us to say if they have symptoms,” Abadelah said.

Samer Mansour, head nurse at the ICU, said when the unit opened only one of the nine beds was occupied.

Now the beds are “always full”, with about 40 per cent of patients under 50, he added, explaining that medical staff in Gaza have experience treating combat wounds, but COVID-19 has posed unprecedented challenges.

Vaccines needed 

Hamas has tried to contain transmission by imposing a 7:00pm curfew, an effort to prevent large gatherings for evening meals during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

But relief from mass vaccination remains a distant prospect.

The United Nations and rights groups have said that Israel has a legal obligation to ensure vaccine supply to Gaza, as the military power responsible for the crippling blockade.

Israel has baulked at such calls, insisting the Palestinian Authority (PA) in occupied West Bank is responsible for all Palestinian vaccinations.

For Gazans, that means relying on the PA which has faced a series of procurement challenges and on the Covax programme set up to support COVID vaccinations among poorer nations.

“We have received 110,000 doses by we need an additional 2.6 million,” Abadelah said.

WAD MADANI, Sudan — As night falls in Sudan, villagers rush to pull over travellers with a friendly roadblock of hospitality celebrating Islam’s holy fasting month of Ramadan, traditions enduring despite dire economic troubles.

Rugs are rolled out on the roadside verge in an impromptu al fresco dining room to celebrate iftar, the fast-breaking evening meal to mark the end of a baking hot day without either a mouthful of food or a drop to drink.

“This is a custom that our grandparents began,” said Aboulmaali Mohamed Ibrahim, offering a meal in the village of Nuba, some 50 kilometres south of Sudan’s capital Khartoum.

“They began inviting travellers for meals following the construction of this road in the 1960s.”

To fasting travellers, the meal is a much welcomed break from their exhausting long trips on Sudan’s often rutted roads.

But to residents living in villages along the road, it is part of upholding Sudan’s long-held traditions of hospitality to strangers and, amid a tough economic crisis, proof that the important things in life must remain the same.

The call for the evening prayer announces the end of another fasting day.

A feast is provided. Parched travellers, struggling after a day in the sun without liquid, are firstly handed a cool and refreshing squeezed juice.

Jugs of the local speciality “hilw-mor”, or “bitter-sweet”, a drink spiced with ginger and cinnamon, is also poured into cups.

Then an array of traditional food ranging from porridge to plump dates is placed out for all to share.

While some villagers are laying out the food, others are still busy waving to stop cars and buses on the busy highway, encouraging people to stop and join.

Ibrahim, despite struggling on the meagre income he earns as teacher, has insisted on sharing his Iftar meal every day since Ramadan began on April 13.

“We just bring whatever we have to the iftar table, no matter how little it is,” he said.

‘Never worry’ 

Sudan has been struggling since the April 2019 toppling of hardline president Omar Al Bashir, following protests against his rule triggered by economic hardship.

Severe shortages of food staples and price hikes remain among the pressing issues, two years after Bashir’s fall, said Ibrahim.

Inflation last month shot up over 330 per cent, the government said.

People now often queue for hours to buy basic foods or to fill their cars with petrol.

Households suffer from frequent power cuts and gas canisters for cooking are often hard to find.

The transitional government, which came to power after Bashir’s ouster, has embarked on painful reforms hoped to rebuild the economy.

In February, it introduced a managed float to the local currency in an attempt to close the yawning gap between the official and black market rates.

Other bold measures include reducing costly subsidies on fuel and other commodities.

But others fear the measures risk fanning popular discontent before coming to fruition.

Mudather Saad, another villager from Nuba, says they typically host around 150-200 travellers to the Iftar meals each evening — but on busy nights even more.

“Our guests sometimes exceed 300 — especially on weekends,” said Saad, as he joined other villagers to block the road and beckon travellers to eat.

With only minutes to go before the call to prayer, Saad and others flag down a bus packed with some 60 passengers.

Omar Hussein, the bus driver, travels the route regularly and is always stopped as iftar time approaches.

“I never worry about missing Iftar,” Hussein said. “I am always sure someone will offer us something on the way.”

BAGHDAD — A fire that ravaged a COVID-19 hospital in Iraq's capital killed 82 people pre-dawn Sunday, sparking angry calls for officials to be sacked in a country with long-dilapidated health infrastructure.

Many of the victims were on respirators when the blaze at Baghdad's Ibn Al Khatib Hospital started with an explosion caused by "a fault in the storage of oxygen cylinders", medical sources told AFP.

Flames spread quickly across multiple floors in the middle of the night, as dozens of relatives were at the bedsides of the 30 patients in the hospital's intensive care unit where the most severe COVID-19 cases are treated, a medical source said.

"The hospital had no fire protection system and false ceilings allowed the flames to spread to highly flammable products," Iraq's civil defence arm said.

Many "victims died because they had to be moved and were taken off ventilators, while the others were suffocated by the smoke," it added.

The country’s human rights commission called on the prime minister, who has so far suspended several officials, to fire Health Minister Hassan Al Tamimi and “bring him to justice”, as anger swelled on social media.

At least 23 deaths were reported by medics in the immediate aftermath of the fire, with an official toll of 82 killed and 110 wounded announced later by the interior ministry.

Videos on social media showed firefighters battling to put out the blaze as patients and their relatives tried to flee the building.

“It was the people [civilians] who got the wounded out,” Amir, 35, told AFP, saying he saved his hospitalised brothers “by the skin of his teeth”.

Iraq’s hospitals have been worn down by decades of conflict and poor investment, with shortages of medicines and hospital beds.

Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhemi called for an investigation into the cause of the blaze and declared three days of national mourning. Parliament announced it would devote its Monday session to the tragedy.

Negligence 

After daybreak, dozens of tall oxygen cylinders that had been evacuated could be seen lined up outside the building, alongside gurneys and scattered debris, an AFP photographer said.

More than 200 patients in all were rescued, according to the health ministry.

The fire — caused by negligence often linked to endemic corruption in Iraq, according to several sources — sparked anger, with a hash-tag demanding the health minister be sacked trending on Twitter.

Baghdad Governor Mohammed Jaber called on the health ministry “to establish a commission of enquiry so that those who did not do their jobs may be brought to justice”.

In a statement, the government’s human rights commission said the incident was “a crime against patients exhausted by COVID-19 who put their lives in the hands of the health ministry and its institutions”.

“Instead of being treated, [they] perished in flames,” it added.

One of the victims of the fire, Ali Ibrahim, 52, had been treated for COVID-19 at Ibn al-Khatib and was buried by his family on Sunday at Zaafaraniya, a neighbourhood near the hospital.

“He had just spent 12 days in hospital and was due to be discharged on Saturday evening after recovering. He was just waiting for the result of the last COVID-19 test,” one of his relatives told AFP.

The prime minister suspended the health director for the eastern sector of Baghdad and the head of Ibn al-Khatib, as well as the hospital’s heads of security and technical maintenance teams.

They are being questioned and nobody, Kadhemi said, will be released “until those who have done wrong are brought to justice”.

Mounting virus cases 

The UN’s top representative in Iraq, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, expressed “shock” at the tragedy and called “for stronger protection measures to ensure that such a disaster cannot reoccur”.

On Wednesday, the number of detected COVID-19 cases in Iraq surpassed one million, the highest of any Arab state.

The health ministry has recorded more than 15,000 deaths since the country’s first infections were reported in February 2020, and has carried out around 40,000 tests daily from a population of 40 million.

Rather than go to overcrowded or run-down hospitals, patients who can afford it have often set up oxygen tanks at home.

Iraq rolled out its vaccination campaign last month and has received nearly 650,000 doses of different vaccines — the majority by donation or through the Covax scheme for low and middle income nations.

Around 300,000 people had received at least one dose as of Sunday, the ministry said.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli warplanes struck the Gaza Strip early Saturday after repeated salvos of rocket fire into Israel followed a second night of clashes between Palestinians and occupation forces in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.

Thirty-six rockets were launched, the Israeli forces said, the most in a single night this year, after Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas voiced support for the East Jerusalem protests, which were fuelled by a Thursday march by far-right Jews.

Washington said it was "deeply concerned" by the escalating violence, while the European Union appealed for restraint.

The United States, which has taken a more even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since President Joe Biden took office in January urged "calm and unity".

"The rhetoric of extremist protesters chanting hateful and violent slogans must be firmly rejected," State Department spokesman Ned Price tweeted.

Tensions have been running high in East Jerusalem over a ban on gatherings, and a series of videos posted online showing young Arabs attacking ultra-Orthodox Jews, and Jewish extremists taking to the streets to bully Arabs.

On Thursday, at least 125 people were injured when Palestinian protesters, angered by chants of “death to Arabs” from far-right Jewish demonstrators, clashed repeatedly with police.

‘Playing with fire’ 

Skirmishes broke out again on Friday when tens of thousands of Muslim worshippers left the city’s revered Al Aqsa Mosque Compound after night prayers and found themselves confronted by dozens of armed police, some on horseback.

Protesters hurled water bottles at police, who fired stun grenades to disperse the crowd.

Hundreds of Palestinians also gathered at the Qalandiya checkpoint between Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, police said.

In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Palestinians threw stones and petrol bombs towards the tomb of biblical matriarch Rachel, a shrine venerated by Jews and Muslims.

There have been nightly disturbances in east Jerusalem since the start of Ramadan on April 13, amid Palestinian anger over police blocking off access to the promenade around the walls of the Old City, a popular gathering place after the end of the daytime Ramadan fast.

Thursday’s march into the heart of Arab East Jerusalem by hundreds of supporters of far-right Jewish nationalist group Lehava added fuel to the fire.

Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion told public radio he was in talks with Palestinian community leaders in East Jerusalem “to end this pointless violence”.

Lion said he had tried to cancel the Lehava march, but police told him it was legal and noted that “dozens” of Jews who attacked Arabs had been arrested in the past two weeks.

The office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned “the growing incitement by extremist far-right Israeli settler groups advocating for the killing of Arabs”.

In a statement on the Palestinians’ official Wafa news agency, it urged the international community to intervene to protect Palestinians.

The UN special coordinator for Middle East peace, Tor Wennesland, called on all sides to “exercise maximum restraint and avoid further escalation”.

“The provocative acts across Jerusalem must cease,” he said.

Hamas’ military wing, the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, voiced support for the East Jerusalem protesters.

“The spark you light today will be the wick of the explosion to come in the face of the enemy,” it said in a statement.

An alliance of Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas and its smaller ally Islamic Jihad, issued a statement warning we “cannot remain silent” in the face of the violence.

Militants in Gaza fired a first salvo of three rockets at Israel shortly before midnight (2100 GMT) Friday, the military said.

The Israeli forces said later that all 36 rockets fired were intercepted or hit open ground.

Israeli tanks shelled Gaza in response but the reprisals were met with a new volley of a dozen rockets, prompting the launch of air strikes against suspected launch sites operated by Hamas, it added.

“Fighter jets and attack helicopters struck a number of Hamas military targets in the Gaza Strip,” including underground infrastructure and rocket launchers, it said.

ISTANBUL — The Turkish army on Saturday launched a new ground and air offensive against outlawed Kurdish militants' bases in northern Iraq, officials and local media reported.

Turkish media said commando forces landed in the Metina region from helicopters while warplanes dropped bombs on Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) targets.

"Heroic commandos of the heroic Turkish Armed Forces are in northern Iraq," the defence ministry said in a tweet without specifying how many soldiers were involved.

Turkish television showed images of paratroopers jumping from helicopters and camouflaged soldiers firing guns.

The PKK, listed as a terror group by Turkey and much of the international community, has for decades used Iraq's northern mountains as a springboard for its decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.

The Turkish army regularly conducts cross-border operations and air raids against PKK bases in northern Iraq.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dubbed this one "Operation Claw-Lightning".

Speaking to the operation's command centre by video link, Erdogan said the offensive's objective was "to completely end the presence of the terror threat ... along our southern borders".

"There's no room for the separatist terror group in the future of Turkey, Iraq or Syria," he said in reference to the Kurdish militants.

"We will keep on fighting until we eradicate these gangs of murderers, who cause nothing but tears and destruction."

In February, Turkey launched an operation dubbed "Claw-Eagle 2" against PKK rebels holed up in the northern Iraqi region of Dohuk.

That raid created controversy because it was designed in part to rescue 12 Turkish soldiers and an Iraqi held captive by the PKK in a cave.

Turkey accused the PKK of executing the 13 men before they could be freed, and Erdogan came under attack for poorly planning the offensive from opposition parties in parliament.

The February raid also created problems in Turkey’s relations with Iran, which now has a strong political and military presence in Iraq, and which treats Erdogan’s regional campaigns with suspicion.

Iran’s ambassador warned in February that Turkish forces should not pose a threat or violate Iraqi soil, prompting Ankara and Tehran to each summon the other’s ambassador.

The Kurdish insurgency against the Turkish state is believed to have killed tens of thousands of people since being launched in 1984.

DUBAI — Entisar Al Hammadi was just starting a career in modelling when she was arrested two months ago in Yemen's rebel-held capital Sanaa, where the Houthis are enforcing a morals campaign.

Born to an Ethiopian mother and Yemeni father, the 19-year-old had been pictured online in traditional dress as well as leather and denim jackets, and sometimes she went without a Muslim headscarf.

With her high cheekbones and piercing green eyes, Hammadi had several thousand followers on Instagram and Facebook where she posted sessions with local stylists and designers.

The Iran-backed Houthis, who seized the Yemeni capital from the government in 2014 and control much of the north, have not commented on her fate.

But Hammadi’s lawyer Khaled Al Kamal said she was targeted for working in the fashion industry which the Shiite rebels consider a violation of Islamic culture.

Hammadi was snatched on February 20 along with two other models and their friend who was driving them to a photo shoot, the lawyer told AFP.

“I still don’t know what she is accused of,” he said.

According to Kamal there have been attempts to defame the young woman, with unverified local reports alleging that she was involved in prostitution and drugs.

“The prosecution is trying to make it look like an act of gross indecency, claiming that my client has let out two strands of her hair out or was not wearing a hijab in a public space,” he said.

Yemeni society, although conservative, has traditionally allowed space for individual freedoms and cultivated an appreciation of music and leisure. But all that changed with the rise of the Houthis.

Morals crackdown 

Hammadi’s detention follows a series of incidents in rebel-held areas that illustrate the Houthis’ determination to impose their own moral code on Yemenis who have been enduring years of grinding conflict.

Restaurants where men and women mingle have been shut down and reports say women have been harassed for wearing belts around their abaya robes, with rebels tearing them off, saying the silhouette they create is too “exciting”.

An investigation into Hammadi’s case was finally opened on April 21, her lawyer said, but the charges against her have not been clarified.

The friend who was driving her is being prosecuted for possession of hashish, he said, but the two cases have been separated.

Essentially, he said, the group was targeted because the Houthis “hate art and artists”.

“They are trying to accuse her of any crime because of her work, which the Houthis oppose,” as if to say “How dare you be a model in a Muslim country?”

‘Catastrophic’ for women 

Kamal has reached out for support from civil society groups which have launched an online campaign under the hashtag #FreeEntisar.

“According to the Houthi vision, this issue is a moral one because they are an extremist religious group,” said Tawfik Al Hamidi, head of the SAM Organisation for Rights and Liberties.

“Entisar’s activity and the field of fashion modelling is new in Yemen, and it is something the group cannot accept,” said the Vienna-based Yemeni human rights activist.

Violence and discrimination against Yemeni women and girls has worsened as a result of the war that has ravaged the country, leaving tens of thousands of people dead and millions pushed to the brink of famine.

Hamidi said the situation of women in Yemen — where Houthis are battling a government backed by a Saudi-led military coalition — is “catastrophic”, with all warring sides contributing to it in one way or another.

But it is worse under the Houthis, who have adopted an Iranian model of the Muslim moral code.

“Arrest, torture, enforced disappearances and sexual violence are particularly prevalent in Sanaa,” he said.

The rebels have targeted women in terms of economic rights, freedom of movement, and exclusion from public sector jobs.

“She is a spirited 19-year-old girl who is full of ambition but the situation is what it is, unfortunately,” Hamidi said of his client.

“Her mother has not stopped crying. Her younger brother is disabled. She was the only provider for the family. It is a painful situation.”

BEIRUT — An Iranian tanker was attacked off Syria’s coast on Saturday sparking a fire, in the first assault of its kind since the war started a decade ago, a war monitor said.

It was not clear who carried out the attack which caused no casualties, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

“We don’t know if this was an Israeli attack,” observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP of Saturday’s assault.

“The Iranian tanker came from Iran and was not far from Banias Port,” he added.

It was not clear either if a drone or a missile was used in the attack, the observatory said.

State news agency SANA, quoting the oil ministry, said the fire erupted after “what was believed to be an attack by a drone from the direction of Lebanese waters”. The flames were later extinguished.

In a report published last month that cited US and Middle East officials, The Wall Street Journal said Israel had targeted at least a dozen vessels bound for Syria and mostly carrying Iranian oil since late 2019.

Hundreds of Israeli air strikes have also struck Syria since the war began in 2011, mostly targeting Damascus regime allies from Iran and the Lebanese Hizbollah movement and Syrian government troops.

The Banias oil refinery is located in the regime-controlled coastal province of Tartus.

“It’s the first such attack on an oil tanker, but the Banias terminal has been targeted in the past,” Abdel Rahman said.

Early last year, Damascus said divers had planted explosives on offshore pipelines of the Banias refinery but the damage had not halted operations.

And in February 2020, four oil and gas sites in the central province of Homs were attacked by armed drones, sparking fires and causing material damage.

Nuclear facility 

Saturday’s attack comes days after a Syrian officer was killed and three soldiers wounded in strikes launched by Israel after a missile was fired towards a secretive nuclear site in Israel.

The Israeli forces said at the time that a surface-to-air missile had been fired from Syria toward the southern Negev desert, where the Dimona nuclear reactor is located.

Israel is considered the leading military power in the Middle East and is widely believed to possess its sole nuclear arsenal.

It has never disclosed its atomic arsenal, but foreign experts say Israel has between 100 to 300 nuclear warheads.

There were no immediate reports of any casualties or damage on the Israeli side.

Israel has long sought to prevent bitter foe Iran from establishing itself in war-torn Syria.

Before Syria’s war, the country enjoyed relative energy autonomy, but production has plummeted during the war, pushing the government to rely on importing hydrocarbons.

Western sanctions on oil shipping, as well as US punitive measures against Iran, have complicated these imports.

Pre-war production was 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) in Syria.

But it stood at just 89,000bpd in 2020, Syria’s oil minister said in February, of which up to 80,000came from Kurdish areas outside government control.