Tag Archives: Middle East

Israel, Palestinians warned against solo steps harmful to peace

World leaders meet in Paris for Israel-Palestine Peace

By John Irish, Lesley Wroughton and Marine Pennetier

PARIS (Reuters) – Some 70 countries reaffirmed on Sunday that only a two-state solution could resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and warned against any unilateral steps by either side that could prejudge negotiations.

The final communique of a one-day international Middle East peace conference in Paris shied away from explicitly criticizing plans by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to move the U.S Embassy to Jerusalem, although diplomats said the wording sent a “subliminal” message.

Trump has pledged to pursue more pro-Israeli policies and to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, all but enshrining the city as Israel’s capital despite international objections.

Countries including key European and Arab states as well as the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council were in Paris for the conference, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected as “futile”.

Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians were represented.

However, just five days before Trump is sworn in, the meeting was seen as a platform for countries to send a strong signal to the incoming American president that a two-state solution to the conflict could not be compromised on and that unilateral decisions could exacerbate tensions on the ground.

The participants “call on each side … to refrain from unilateral steps that prejudge the outcome of negotiations on final-status issues, including, inter alia, on Jerusalem, borders, security, refugees and which they will not recognize,” the final communique said.

A French diplomatic source said there had been tough negotiations on that paragraph.

“It’s a tortuous and complicated paragraph to pass a subliminal message to the Trump administration,” the diplomat said.

REAFFIRMING RESOLUTION 2334

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters it would have been inappropriate to include the issue of moving the U.S. embassy, it being publicly debated in the United States.

Relations between the United States and Israel have soured during President Barack Obama’s administration, reaching a low point late last month when Washington declined to veto U.N. resolution 2334 demanding an end to Israeli settlements in occupied territory.

Paris has said the meeting did not aim to impose anything on Israel or the Palestinians and that only direct negotiations could resolve the conflict.

The final draft did not go into any details other than reaffirming U.N. Security Council resolutions, including 2334. Diplomats said that had been a source of friction in talks.

“When some are questioning this, it’s vital for us to recall the framework of negotiations. That framework is the 1967 borders and the main resolutions of the United Nations,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told reporters.

Kerry, who abandoned his efforts to broker peace talks in April 2014, told reporters that the meeting had “moved the ball forward.”

“It underscores this is not just one administration’s point of view, this is shared by the international community broadly,” he said.

France, home to Europe’s largest Muslim and Jewish communities, has tried to breathe new life into the peace process over the past year and argued that it should not play second fiddle to the war in Syria and the fight against Islamic State militants.

FOLLOW-UP MEETING?

The final statement said interested parties would meet again before year-end.

But Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting on Sunday that “this conference is among the last twitches of the world of yesterday … Tomorrow will look different and that tomorrow is very close.”

Britain added its criticism on Sunday. A Foreign Office statement said the Paris conference risked “hardening positions” given Israel had objected to it and that the U.S. administration is about to change.

Prime Minister Theresa May delivered a sharp rebuke on Israel last month to its U.S. ally when she scolded Secretary of State John Kerry for describing the Israeli government as the most right-wing in Israeli history. The criticism aligned her more closely with Trump.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who said on Saturday that moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem would kill off the peace process, said the Paris meeting would help at stopping “settlement activities and destroying the two-state solution through dictations and the use of force.”

(Additional reporting Lesley Wroughton in Paris and Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Syrian Kurdish groups say not invited to peace talks

Kurdish fighter in Syria

PARIS (Reuters) – The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia and its political arm the PYD will not be invited to planned peace talks in Kazakhstan, a PYD official said on Tuesday, an outcome that would leave a key player in the conflict off the negotiating table.

Syria’s government and rebel forces started a ceasefire on Dec. 31 as a first step toward face-to face negotiations backed by Turkey and Russia, but the date and its participants remain unclear.

The truce is also under growing strain as rebels have vowed to respond to government violations and President Bashar al-Assad said on Monday the army would retake an important rebel-held area near Damascus.

“We are not invited. That’s for sure,” Khaled Eissa, a PYD member told Reuters in France. “It seems there were some vetoes. Neither the PYD or our military formation will be present,” he said.

Assad’s ally Russia had previously sought the PYD’s presence at other negotiations in Switzerland.

But Turkey, which opposes Assad, regards both the YPG and PYD as extensions of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) separatists in its own territory and has said two groups should not be represented in Astana.

The Syrian Kurds aim to cement the autonomy of areas of northern Syria where Kurdish groups have already carved out self-governing regions since the start of the war in 2011, though Kurdish leaders say an independent state is not the goal.

“What we have been told is that there will only be a limited number of armed groups and not political groups,” Eissa said, adding that for a comprehensive peace deal in Syria the Kurds would at one point have to be invited to the negotiating table.

The main Syrian political opposition umbrella group that includes about half a dozen armed groups, the Riyadh-backed High Negotiations Committee, is meeting in the Saudi capital later this week to discuss the Astana talks, although it is also unclear whether Moscow intends to invite them, diplomats and opposition officials said.

Ankara intervened in Syria last year in support of rebel groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army (FSA) banner sought to drive Islamic State from positions it had used to shell Turkish towns, and also to stop YPG expansion.

The YPG and its allies backed by a U.S.-led coalition is fighting against IS militants around the group’s Syrian bastion Raqqa, while Turkish-backed rebels are fighting the jihadist group further northwest near areas under Kurdish control.

(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Two car bombs in Baghdad kill at least 14:sources

Iraqi security forces at the scene of car bomb

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Two car bombs in Baghdad killed at least 14 people on Thursday, police and medics said, part of a surge in violence across the capital at a time U.S.-backed forces try to drive Islamic State from the northern city of Mosul.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the first blast which went off in Baghdad’s eastern al-Obeidi area during the morning rush, killing six and wounding 15.

The ultra-hardline Sunni group said it had targeted a gathering of Shi’ite Muslims, whom it considers apostates.

The second explosion hit the central Baghdad district of Bab al-Moadham near a security checkpoint, killing eight. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Both bombs had been left in parked vehicles.

More than 60 people have been killed in Baghdad in attacks over the past week as Islamic State intensifies its campaign of violence in the capital as a 100,000-strong alliance of Iraqi forces extends its advances against the group in Mosul.

Mosul is Islamic State’s last major stronghold in the country. The group has lost most of the territory it seized in northern and western Iraq in 2014, and ceding Mosul would probably spell the end of its self-styled caliphate.

Lieutenant General Talib Shaghati, Iraq’s joint operations commander, told Reuters on Wednesday that pro-government troops had retaken about 70 percent of Mosul’s eastern districts since an offensive began on Oct. 17.

(Reporting by Saif Hameed; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Richard Lough)

More than 2,000 Iraqis a day flee Mosul as military advances

Iraqis fleeing the Islamic State

By Stephen Kalin and Isabel Coles

NEAR MOSUL/ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – More than 2,000 Iraqis a day are fleeing Mosul, several hundred more each day than before U.S.-led coalition forces began a new phase of their battle to retake the city from Islamic State, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

After quick initial advances, the operation stalled for several weeks but last Thursday Iraqi forces renewed their push from Mosul’s east toward the Tigris River on three fronts.

Elite interior ministry troops were clearing the Mithaq district on Wednesday, after entering it on Tuesday when counterterrorism forces also retook an industrial zone.

Federal police advanced in the Wahda district, the military said on Wednesday, in the 11th week of Iraq’s largest military campaign since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.

As they advanced, many more civilian casualties were also being recorded, the U.N. said.

Vastly outnumbered, the militants have embedded themselves among residents and are using the city terrain to their advantage, concealing car bombs in narrow alleys, posting snipers on tall buildings with civilians on lower floors, and making tunnels and surface-level passageways between buildings.

“We were very afraid,” one Mithaq resident said.

“A Daesh (Islamic State) anti-aircraft weapon was positioned close to our house and was opening fire on helicopters. We could see a small number of Daesh fighters in the street carrying light and medium weapons. They were hit by planes.”

Security forces have retaken about a quarter of Mosul since October but, against expectations and despite severe shortages of food and water, most residents have stayed put until now.

More than 125,000 people have been displaced out of a population of roughly 1.5 million, but the numbers have increased by nearly 50 percent to 2,300 daily from 1,600 over the last few days, the U.N. refugee agency said.

The humanitarian situation was “dire”, with food stockpiles dwindling and the price of staples spiraling, boreholes drying up or turning brackish from over-use and camps and emergency sites to the south and east reaching maximum capacity, it said.

Most of the fleeing civilians are from the eastern districts but people from the besieged west, still under the militants’ control, are increasingly attempting to escape, scaling bridges bombed by the coalition and crossing the Tigris by boat.

An Iraqi victory in Mosul would probably spell the end for Islamic State’s self-styled caliphate but in recent days the militants have displayed the tactics to which they are likely to resort if they lose the city, killing dozens with bombs in Baghdad and attacking security forces elsewhere.

Speaking with reporters in Washington through a video link, a U.S. military spokesman said the number of U.S.-led coalition advisers assisting Iraqi security forces in the second phase of the operation to retake Mosul had doubled to 450 in the past few weeks.

Air Force Colonel John Dorrian, a spokesman for the coalition fighting Islamic State, also confirmed that the advisors had entered the city limits of Mosul.

“They have been in the city at different times,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Stephen Kalin and Idrees Ali in Washington.; Editing by Louise Ireland and Alistair Bell)

Iraqi forces face fierce Islamic State combat in south Mosul

Iraqi army during battle against Islamic State

By Stephen Kalin

NEAR MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi forces faced fierce resistance from Islamic State militants in southern Mosul on Friday, the second day of a renewed push to take back the city after fighting stalled for several weeks.

An officer in the federal police forces, which joined the battle on Thursday, said there were heavy clashes in the southeastern Palestine district, but they had made progress in two other neighborhoods, disabling a number of car bombs.

Another officer, from an elite Interior Ministry unit fighting alongside federal police, said his forces were gaining ground in the Intisar district despite heavy clashes there.

Iraqi forces in the east and north of the city were clearing areas they had recaptured on Thursday before advancing any further, officers said, and the army was trying to cut supply lines to the town of Tel Keyf, north of Mosul.

Since the offensive began 10 weeks ago, U.S.-backed forces have retaken a quarter of the jihadists’ last major stronghold in Iraq in the biggest ground operation there since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Recapturing Mosul would probably spell the end for Islamic State’s self-styled caliphate, and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said the group would be driven out of Iraq by April.

Elite forces pushed into Mosul from the east in October but regular army troops tasked with advancing from the north and south made slower progress and the operation stagnated.

After regrouping this month, they renewed the offensive on Thursday, advancing from the south, east and north of the city, which has been under militant control for more than two years.

The second phase of the operation will see U.S. troops deployed closer to the front line inside the city.

On Friday, a Reuters reporter saw a handful of Americans in their MRAP vehicles, that tower over Iraqi tanks, accompanying top commanders to meetings in a village just north of Mosul.

Although the militants are vastly outnumbered, they have embedded themselves among Mosul residents, hindering Iraqi forces who are trying to avoid civilian casualties. Despite food and water shortages, most civilians have stayed in their homes rather than fleeing as had been expected.

A civilian in the southeastern Wahda district, which is still under Islamic State control, said helicopters were visible overhead firing at Islamic State targets on the ground.

“One of them targeted a car carrying a rocket launching pad from which Daesh (Islamic State) was targeting counterterrorism positions in liberated areas,” he said over the phone.

NORTHERN FRONT

On the northern front, Iraqi forces have yet to enter Mosul itself but on Friday they were clearing just-recaptured areas on its periphery as well as trying to cut off Tel Keyf.

“The enemy had occupied this area and used it for resting and resupplying toward Tel Keyf and Mosul,” Major General Najm al-Jubbouri, a top commander in the offensive told Reuters in the northern district of Sada, which was recaptured on Thursday.

“It (Tel Keyf) is surrounded from the other sides and by our forces here,” he said.

Jubbouri said the U.S.-led coalition backing Iraqi forces had killed 70 militants since late on Thursday and were using Apache helicopters, HIMARS rocket launchers and fighter jets.

Mosul is bisected by the Tigris river, and Iraqi forces have yet to enter the western side, where 2,000-year-old markets and narrow alleyways are likely to complicate any advance.

Coalition forces bombed the last remaining bridge connecting east and west Mosul late on Monday in a bid to block Islamic State’s access across the Tigris River.

A medical source in Mosul told Reuters a large number of wounded militants had been ferried across the river to the emergency hospital on the western side of city on Thursday.

The source said the militants were denying wounded and sick civilians access to the hospital.

More than 114,000 civilians have been displaced from Mosul so far, according to the United Nations – a fraction of the 1.5 million thought to still be inside.

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Louise Ireland)

After the battle, Aleppo shows its scars

A part of Aleppo before and after the war

By Laila Bassam

ALEPPO, Syria (Reuters) – Before the war, Aleppo’s ancient walled citadel drew in armies of visitors to one of the Middle East’s greatest treasures.

But for the past four years the Citadel’s high stone ramparts have been on the front line of fighting pitting the Syrian army and its allies against rebels who occupied much of the Old City surrounding the fortress.

Sudden advances by the army led to a ceasefire last week and evacuation of insurgents and many civilians, ending the warfare in Aleppo and putting the city entirely into government hands.

Reuters photographs from before and after the fighting reveal how the city has been scarred by years of air strikes, shelling, street fighting, fires and neglect. For a slideshow see: http://reut.rs/2ibm9sD

The fate of Aleppo, listed by the United Nations as a World Heritage Site, has been the subject of great anxiety for city residents, archaeologists, historians and travelers, even as they despair for the human suffering caused by the fighting.

“We are now exactly in front of the Citadel’s entrance. These streets are very familiar. My school was nearby. Now, only part of it is left,” said Abdel Rahman Berry, a lawyer. “It was ruined. They ravaged our childhood memories,” he added.

Large sections of Aleppo’s Islamic-era covered market or souk, one of the most extensive in the world, were destroyed in clashes in 2012 and 2013, and the 11th century minaret of the Umayyad mosque was brought down by shelling.

During a visit to the Old City and inside the Umayyad mosque with the Syrian army, reporters were shown rubble-strewn streets and scorched walls that were once part of the souk, pocked with bullet holes and daubed with slogans.

The Umayyad mosque was also scarred by the fighting, and the remains of its ancient stone minaret lay in a heap in one corner where it had collapsed after suffering a direct hit, but despite damage, its elegant floor and arcaded walls remained.

“THE EYE AND ITS PUPIL”

While the city, one of the oldest continuously habited in the world, was split into warring government and rebel sectors, the army retained control of the citadel even when it was surrounded by insurgents on three sides and could only be accessed by a tunnel.

“There were around 25 of us protecting the citadel. We used to switch with armed men who were stationed in the old market through a tunnel that was dug underneath,” said a Syrian soldier from the Citadel’s garrison.

Despite that exposed position, and repeated attempts by rebels to capture it, the damage to the Citadel, with its towering gatehouse and sloping arched bridge, was not as bad as elsewhere in the Old City. Government snipers fired at rebels through arrow slits in walls.

“There is some damage but it can be managed. The situation is good inside the Citadel but the disaster and the real damage was inflicted on the old market,” said Mamoun Abdelkarim, Syria’s Director General of Antiquities.

During its stormy history, Aleppo has been controlled by Hittites, Assyrians, Arabs, Mongols, Mamluks and Ottomans and it bears the marks of many of those conquerors in its diverse architectural styles.

The great Ayyubid leader Salah al-Din, who battled European Crusaders in the 12th century, described Aleppo as being “the eye of Syria, and the citadel is its pupil”.

No stranger to war and disaster, the Citadel was damaged by the Mongol invasion of 1260 and again destroyed by invading forces in 1400. It was used as a barracks for Ottoman troops and more recently for soldiers during the French mandate. It sustained heavy damage in the earthquake of 1822.

Among important features lost in recent fighting were medieval mosques and trading houses. Others, including the al-Shibani church school, evidence of Aleppo’s history of religious tolerance, and the 13th century Nahasin bathhouse were damaged.

Aleppo’s Old City and citadel had been restored in 2004.

One of the tactics used by rebels in the intense street fighting through the Old City’s narrow alleyways was the detonation of mines, dug beneath army positions in tunnels. The soldier said even on top of the citadel one such blast, under the Carlton Hotel, a landmark, had felt like an earthquake.

“The bodies of our comrades are still under the hotel rubble,” he added.

(Reporting By Laila Bassam in Aleppo; Additional reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus and Dahlia Nehme in Beirut; Writing by Angus McDowall, editing by Peter Millership)

French Middle East peace conference to be postponed: Palestinian official

Benjamin Netanyahu shakes hands with Palestine President

RAMALLAH/PARIS (Reuters) – France will postpone a proposed Middle East peace conference in Paris to January next year, Voice of Palestine radio reported on Wednesday, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refusing to participate and U.S. attendance in doubt.

France has been trying to persuade Netanyahu, who has repeatedly rejected the conference proposal, to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the French capital to try to revive moribund peace talks between the two sides.

Voice of Palestine radio quoted Palestinian Ambassador to France Salman El Herfi as saying that Paris had informed the Palestinians of its delay to the peace conference until January “to make better preparations”.

It said Herfi would meet French officials on Wednesday to discuss the issue and that he had said that if Israel refused to come in January, the international conference would still go ahead, but without the main protagonists.

Asked to comment on the situation, a spokesman for the French foreign ministry replied: “As of now, France has never officially confirmed any date for this conference. We will do so once we have had the results of our talks with all the parties concerned.”

France has repeatedly tried to breathe new life into the peace process this year, holding a preliminary conference in June where the United Nations, European Union, United States and major Arab countries gathered to discuss proposals without the Israelis or Palestinians present.

The plan was to hold a follow-up conference before Christmas with the Israelis and Palestinians involved to see whether the two sides could be brought back to negotiations.

The conference of foreign ministers was aimed at agreeing on a joint statement that would reaffirm the two-state solution on the basis of pre-1967 borders and according to Security Council resolutions, diplomats said.

The Palestinian mission in Paris was not immediately available for comment.

(Reporting by Ali Sawafta and John Irish; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Ralph Boulton)

In Jordan hospital, mental trauma scars children blown apart by bombs

Rachid Jassam, 15, who nearly had his leg amputated after he was injured by an airstrike outside his house in Falluja, Iraq, sits on a hospital bed inside a Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital in Amman, Jordan

By Lin Taylor

AMMAN (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – As soon as the bombs exploded outside his house in the Iraqi town of Falluja, Rachid Jassam rushed onto the street to rescue the injured.

As the teenager ran out, another plane swooped overhead and dropped more bombs, the shrapnel tearing his right leg so severely local doctors wanted to amputate it.

His father refused the amputation to spare his son from a life of disability, and opted for basic surgery instead.

“When I got injured, I didn’t lose consciousness. I witnessed the whole thing when the people came and took me to the hospital. I remember everything,” 15-year-old Jassam said through an interpreter at a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital in Amman in Jordan.

“I lost five centimetres of my bone from my right leg and I couldn’t move it anymore.”

More than 20 per cent of all patients at the MSF hospital are children just like Rachid – blown apart, severely burnt and disfigured by conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Gaza.

Since it opened in 2006, the hospital has treated almost 4,400 patients free of charge, and remains the only hospital in the Middle East to perform advanced reconstructive surgery on victims of war.

But as conflicts rage across Middle East, hospital staff say resources have been stretched in recent years, with most patients coming from Syria and Yemen.

For Jassam, the clinic has been his lifeline. Sitting on his hospital bed in the Jordanian capital after receiving specialised surgery on his leg, he smiles broadly as he holds onto his crutches.

“Thank God, it’s God that preserved my leg.”

“YOU SEE WAR EVERY DAY”

Not all children are so lucky.

In a small pink room on the upper levels of the hospital, young girls with disfigured faces and missing limbs grow increasingly agitated as they try to solve puzzles and play board games.

“Sometimes the trauma affects their memory skills or problem-solving, and it also has psychological effects like low attention span. They can get frustrated easily and they have low self-esteem,” said occupational therapist Nour Al-Khaleeb, 24, who is part of a team of mental health specialists.

“You see war every day, you see their injuries, you see how it’s affecting their lives – and sometimes it has an effect on you too,” she said, talking loudly over the girls’ screams and chatter.

“Maybe they will remember that someone did something good for them, and this will give them hope later on in life.”

Around 60 people, mainly young men, undergo complex orthopaedic, facial and burn reconstructive surgery at the hospital each month, according to MSF. They also receive psychological care and counselling during their stay.

Mohammed, 11, said his family was fleeing the city of Homs in Syria by car when an airstrike hit, injuring him and his two brothers. He watched as his mother died in the explosion.

“A part of the bomb went into my leg and fractured my bone into pieces – it cut into my nerves and tendons,” he said through an interpreter, insisting he wasn’t scared when the bombs fell overhead.

Hobbling down the hospital corridor on crutches after a recent operation on his leg, Mohammed said he will get on with his life when he is discharged, and return to join his family in Jordan’s Zataari refugee camp, which hosts almost 80,000 Syrian refugees.

RESILIENCE

Clinical psychologist Elisa Birri, who heads the mental health team, said it was common for children in the hospital, especially boys, to put on a brave front.

But sooner or later, psychological symptoms like bedwetting, depression, anxiety, aggression and insomnia can crop up, said Birri. At the severe end of the spectrum, patients can experience flashbacks, panic attacks and disassociation, where they lose their sense of reality.

“Children show in their drawings and during free play what they have experienced, it’s like a mirror. For example, they will draw themselves playing with guns because of the war context they came from,” said Birri, adding that children will sometimes regress to an infantile state to cope with the trauma.

But having worked in Libya and Syria, the Italian psychologist added that the maturity and resilience of children living in war-torn countries were beyond their years.

“They go through really big events, but you see them smiling every day, playing every day. They never stop having motivation to go on.”

This rings true for 15-year-old Jassam. Even after being severely injured and besieged by Islamic State militants for eight months, Jassam said he can’t wait to return to Falluja once he leaves the hospital.

“I want to go back to Falluja, I miss it. I miss everyone there,” he said, smiling and nodding his head in excitement.

“I have a goat and it’s the only surviving goat and she has given birth, so there are babies waiting for me.”

(Reporting by Lin Taylor @linnytayls, Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian issues, conflicts, global land and property rights, modern slavery and human trafficking, women’s rights, and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)

U.N. launches record $22.2 billion humanitarian appeal for 2017

War in Aleppo

By Umberto Bacchi

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The United Nations launched a record humanitarian appeal on Monday, asking for $22.2 billion in 2017 to help almost 93 million people hit by conflicts and natural disasters.

More than half of the money will be used to address the needs of people caught up in crises in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and South Sudan, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

The appeal followed a trend of steady increases that have seen requests for funds grow almost three-fold from $7.9 billion in 2011.

“The scale of humanitarian crises today is greater than at any time since the United Nations was founded,” U.N. humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien said in a statement.

“Not in living memory have so many people needed our support and solidarity to survive and live in safety and dignity”.

Several countries, including Afghanistan, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia have issued emergency appeals almost annually for the past 25 years and some faced worsening crises in 2017, the U.N. said.

In 2016, the U.N. sought $22.1 billion, having initially appealed for $20.1 billion but a shortfall in donations meant the appeal was only 51 percent funded as of Nov. 30.

“Sadly, with persistently escalating humanitarian needs, the gap between what has to be done to save and protect more people today and what humanitarians are financed to do and can access is growing ever wider,” OCHA head O’Brien wrote.

As humanitarian needs continue to rise, aid workers are increasingly at risk of targeted attacks and their efforts are hampered by reduced access, growing disrespect for human rights and flagrant violations of international humanitarian law, O’Brien said.

In Syria, humanitarian needs were expected to “grow exponentially” if no political solution was found to the nearly six-year-old conflict, with 13.5 million people requiring aid.

In Afghanistan, where government forces are struggling to contain a Taliban insurgency, 1.8 million people, mostly children, will require treatment for acute malnutrition next year, according to the appeal.

The political crisis in Burundi will see the number of people in need of urgent support triple to about three million.

The U.N. last week doubled its appeal for northeast Nigeria to $1 billion, hoping to reach nearly 7 million people hit by the Islamist militant Boko Haram insurgency, including 75,000 children at risk of starving to death.

“Funding in support of the plans will translate into life-saving food assistance to people on the brink of starvation in the Lake Chad Basin and South Sudan,” said O’Brien.

Long-term conflicts resulted in higher costs partially because falling state revenues required aid agencies to offer healthcare, education and other services traditionally provided by governments, said Paul Knox Clarke, head of research and communications at ALNAP, a humanitarian action learning network.

“You have a situation where the humanitarian funding is basically this sort of welfare service provision,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

(Reporting by Umberto Bacchi @UmbertoBacchi, Editing by Astrid Zweynert and Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Russia says to start talks with U.S. on Aleppo rebel withdrawal

smoke rises after air strike

By Ellen Francis, Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Maria Kiselyova

BEIRUT/MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Russian government said on Monday it would start talks with Washington on a rebel withdrawal from Aleppo this week as Russian-backed Syrian forces fought to seize more territory from rebels who are struggling to avoid a major defeat.

The latest army attack, which saw fierce clashes around the Old City, aims to cut off another area of rebel control in eastern Aleppo and tighten the noose on opposition-held districts where tens of thousands of people are trapped.

Advances in recent weeks have brought Damascus, backed militarily by Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, closer to recapturing Syria’s second largest city before the nearly six-year war and a prize long sought by President Bashar al-Assad.

The rebels are now reduced to an area just kilometers across.

While Assad’s allies have in the past year turned the battle in his favor, Western and regional states backing the rebels have been unwilling or unable to prevent a major defeat for groups who have fought for years to topple the Syrian leader.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said talks with the United States on the withdrawal of rebels would begin in Geneva on Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning. There was no immediate comment from Washington, which has backed some of the rebels.

“Those armed groups who refuse to leave eastern Aleppo will be considered to be terrorists,” Lavrov told a news conference. “We will treat them as such, as terrorists, as extremists and will support a Syrian army operation against those criminal squads.”

While the rebels have said they will not leave, one opposition official, who declined to be identified, conceded they may have no alternative for the sake of civilians who have been under siege for five months and faced relentless government bombardments.

“The people are paying a high price, with no state or organization intervening,” the official said, adding that this was his personal assessment based on reports from the city.

With narrow alleyways, big mansions and covered markets the ancient city of Aleppo became a UNESCO heritage site in 1986. Many historic buildings have been destroyed in the fighting.

BLACK SMOKE RISES NEAR CITADEL

Responding to Russia’s demand for their withdrawal, rebels told U.S. officials on Saturday they would not leave. Reiterating that position on Monday, rebel official Zakaria Malahifji said, “No person in his right mind, who has any sense of responsibility and patriotism, would leave his city.”

“The Russians are trying to do everything they can to make people leave. This is far from reality,” he said, speaking to Reuters from Turkey.

Insurgents, meanwhile, fought back ferociously inside Aleppo. Some of the fighting took place within a kilometre of the ancient citadel, a large fortress built on a mound, and around the historic Old City.

Heavy gunfire could be heard from the Old City and smoke from mortar shell blasts rose from the area, Reuters journalists in a government-held western district said.

Rebels appeared on the verge of being driven from the al-Shaar neighborhood after new advances by Syrian government forces on Sunday. But rebels said they had mounted a counter-attack on Monday, and were recovering ground in some areas.

Clashes raged in the Old City itself, which has long been split between government- and rebel-held areas, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

A Syrian army officer told Reuters intense fighting was taking place around the Old City.

State television broadcast a report from inside a hospital complex seized from rebels on Sunday. The hospital is strategically important because it overlooks surrounding areas held by insurgents.

A government takeover of the eye hospital complex and areas stretching west from there to the citadel would cut the remaining rebel-held areas of eastern Aleppo in two, further isolating embattled rebel groups. Rebels said they were fighting back in that area too on Monday.

REBELS LAUNCH COUNTER-ATTACKS

“They (rebels) are trying to take back all the areas the regime took yesterday (including) the eye hospital, al-Myassar,” Malahifji said.

Moscow said a rebel attack on a mobile military hospital killed one Russian medic and wounded two others.

The United Nations says more than 200,000 people might still be trapped in rebel-held areas, affected by severe food and aid shortages. “We need to reach them,” U.N. aid chief Stephen O’Brien said in Geneva on Monday.

“People have been eking what they can, prices have skyrocketed so there is a real and severe shortage of foodstuffs.”

Russia is expected to veto a U.N. resolution on Monday which calls for a seven-day ceasefire, with Lavrov saying a truce was counter-productive because it would allow rebels to regroup.

State TV said rebel shelling killed seven people in government-held areas of Aleppo on Monday.

More than 300 people have been killed in government bombardments of rebel-held areas since mid-November, and 70 have died in rebel shellings, the Syrian Observatory says.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry in Beirut, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, Firas Makdesi in Aleppo, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Jack Stubbs in Moscow; Writing by John Davison; Editing by Tom Perry and Peter Millership)