Families of Israeli hostages want Israel to accept Hamas’s proposal of exchanging Palestinian prisoners for the hostages, but Israel’s president made no commitment.
The ICRC said the urgently-needed supplies and essential drugs, which were flown in, would be distributed to facilities across Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray
Roughly 45-million people in southern Africa are in urgent need of food aid as a result of drought, flooding and economic hardship, the UN said Thursday. “This hunger crisis is on a scale we’ve not seen before and the evidence shows it’s going to get worse,” World Food Programme (WFP) regional director Lola Castro said […]
South Sudan’s five-year-long civil war has left possibly tens of thousands of people without limbs — a toll that may never be accurately established
Venezuela is locked in a deep economic and political crisis despite sitting on the world’s largest oil reserves
The Red Cross says one of its teams in Mali is missing, which al-Qaeda-aligned group Mujao has reportedly confirmed was kidnapped by them.
The CAR’s new interim leader has ordered troops in Bangui to shoot troublemakers "at point blank range" in a bid to end months of violence.
One of the strongest typhoons ever to make landfall in the Philippines has left more than 1 000 people dead in the country, says the Red Cross.
The South African Red Cross’s governing board has suspended former beauty queen and TV personality Gerry Elsdon with immediate effect.
The Red Cross in the Central African Republic said it has found some 78 bodies in the streets of the capital Bangui since it fell to the rebels.
Visiting Red Cross chief is seeking access to those detained in more than five months of anti-regime protests in Syria.
The UN said on Friday that the number of deaths in Sri Lanka’s civil war in recent months was ”unacceptably high”, but declined to give figures.
At least 120 people have died from cholera throughout Mozambique since January, Ministry of Health spokesperson Leonardo Chavane said on
Wednesday.
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/ 14 January 2009
The Philippines is ready to resume peace talks with the country’s largest Muslim rebel group, government’s chief peace negotiator said on Wednesday.
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/ 19 November 2008
The international Red Cross is asking for -million, but acknowledged that the global financial crisis means donors will be less generous.
President Thabo Mbeki has brushed off criticism that he failed to show compassion by not visiting areas affected by violent attacks against foreigners around the country, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Thursday.
The Department of Home Affairs said on Wednesday it planned to establish shelters for foreigners who have fled xenophobic attacks over the last two weeks. The BBC reported on Wednesday that seven ”refugee camps” would be set up. By Monday night there were an estimated 17Â 000 displaced foreigners left in Johannesburg.
Jimmy Malish huddles under a blanket, looks at the darkening sky and prays that it doesn’t rain again on him and the hundreds of other African migrants camped in the courtyard of a Johannesburg police station. Although President Thabo Mbeki has condemned the violence, on the ground there are few signs the government has stepped in with significant aid for victims.
Burma’s junta extended the house arrest of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday, a move likely to dismay Western nations who promised millions of dollars in aid after Cyclone Nargis. Officials drove to the Nobel laureate’s lakeside Rangoon home to read out a six-month extension order in person.
Several institutions, including the Development Bank of Southern Africa, and national carrier South African Airways, offered funding totalling more than R20-million to xenophobia victims on Tuesday. SAA chief executive Khaya Ngqula said the airline would donate about R750Â 000 to the Red Cross.
On a vast rubbish-strewn field in a mining area east of Johannesburg, hundreds of destitute Africans who have fled their makeshift homes in nearby slums shiver in the morning cold. The land, covered in white tents donated by aid groups, resembles the all-too-familiar refugee camps seen across this violence-hit continent.
The South African government came under pressure on Monday to deal with the aftermath of deadly anti-foreigner violence that has displaced an estimated 35Â 000 people. As thousands headed for the borders, a growing humanitarian crisis was developing domestically with crowds of foreigners sheltering at police stations.
As the sun set on another bloody day of xenophobic violence in Gauteng on Monday, at least 22 people were reported dead, many more injured and 217 arrested for fierce attacks on both foreigners and local residents living in the greater Johannesburg area. Aid organisations were assisting thousands of refugees at civic centres and police stations.
As a fresh wave of severe xenophobic violence gripped Johannesburg on Sunday, with five people killed in the Cleveland area, hundreds fleeing to the safety of police stations and shops in the CBD looted, President Thabo Mbeki announced that a panel had been set up to look into the attacks.
Earthquake’s don’t destroy strong, well-built buildings. They destroy weak ones. As China reels from its biggest earthquake in 30 years, public anger is mounting. The danger for the Communist government is obvious. China is earthquake prone, Sichuan in particular experiencing a similar scale earthquake in 1933.
Minister of Safety and Security Charles Nqakula said on Friday that those responsible for continuous xenophobic attacks in Gauteng townships will be ”severely dealt with”. He was responding to the violence in Alexandra and Diepsloot that erupted in the past week, in which three people were killed and dozens injured.
Torrential tropical downpours lashed Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta on Friday, deepening the misery of an estimated 2,5-million destitute survivors of Cyclone Nargis and further hampering aid efforts. Burma state television raised its official death toll on Thursday to 43 328. Independent experts say the figures are probably far higher.
At least 100 people were killed and scores injured when fuel from a pipeline ruptured by an earthmover caught fire and exploded in a Nigerian village near the biggest city of Lagos, the Red Cross said on Thursday. The fireball engulfed homes and schools at Ijegun village in the Lagos district of Alimosho, and many of the dead, who included schoolchildren, were killed in the ensuing stampede.
Calm returned to Alexandra township on Wednesday night after earlier clashes between police and residents. Hardly any activity was visible late in the night, besides the flashing blue lights of police patrol vehicles. The stand-off between the police and residents arose in the aftermath of xenophobic attacks in the township this week.
Burma tightened access to its cyclone disaster zone on Wednesday, turning back foreigners and ignoring pleas to accept outside experts who could save countless lives before time runs out. A top European Union humanitarian official said there was now a risk of famine, after the storm destroyed rice stocks in a main farming region.
Desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis poured out of Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta on Sunday in search of food, water and medicine as aid groups said thousands more people will die if emergency supplies do not get through soon. Buddhist temples and high schools in towns on the outskirts of Nargis’s trail of destruction are now makeshift refugee centres.
Burma said on Monday that nearly 4Â 000 people had been killed in the cyclone that tore into the impoverished and secretive Asian nation at the weekend, and that tens of thousands more could also be dead. The announcement on state television increased the death toll from Tropical Cyclone Nargis more than ten-fold.