Pregnant women and new mothers face terrifying ordeal as Israel-Hamas war in Gaza enters fifth month

Special Pregnant women and new mothers face terrifying ordeal as Israel-Hamas war in Gaza enters fifth month
Nearly 20,000 babies have been born in Gaza since the start of the war. (AFP)
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Updated 06 February 2024
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Pregnant women and new mothers face terrifying ordeal as Israel-Hamas war in Gaza enters fifth month

Pregnant women and new mothers face terrifying ordeal as Israel-Hamas war in Gaza enters fifth month
  • Palestinian women endure childbirth amid displacement, shortages and constant Israeli bombardment
  • Newborns and small children at risk of injury and illness as a result of bombing, poor sanitation and winter cold

JEDDAH: Mashael was at home with her husband when an explosion tore through their building in central Gaza in late December. Since then, Mashael’s unborn baby has not moved. Without prenatal care, she has no idea whether the baby is still alive.

Speaking to aid workers a month after the bombing that buried her husband, Mashael said it was probably for the best that “a baby wasn’t born into this nightmare.”

Her account was shared with Ammar Ammar, regional head of advocacy and communications for the UN children’s fund, UNICEF, during a recent visit to the Emirati Hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza.

“The situation of pregnant women and newborns in the Gaza Strip is beyond belief, and it demands intensified and immediate actions,” Ammar told a recent press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.




Some 1.6 million people — more than half the population of Gaza — have been displaced to Rafah in the far south. (AFP)

“The already precarious situation of infant and maternal mortality has worsened as the healthcare system collapses … Nearly 20,000 babies have been born into war. That’s a baby born into this horrendous war every 10 minutes.”

After almost four months of fighting in Gaza, the local health system has all but collapsed, leaving pregnant women and newborns especially vulnerable amid a shortage of medical staff and pain relief, an increased risk of complications, and the potential for infections.

Those who give birth in one of Gaza’s remaining hospitals are quickly discharged to make way for the war wounded. The less fortunate are often forced to give birth in tents in one of Gaza’s sprawling and squalid displacement camps.

Some 1.6 million people — more than half the population of Gaza — have been displaced to Rafah in the far south, close to the border with Egypt, where they are confined in an area equivalent to just 20 percent of the entire enclave.

“Our governorate used to be inhabited by approximately 300,000 people before Oct. 7,” Hisham Mhanna, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, told Arab News via WhatsApp from Gaza.

“Now, every inhabitant of this very tiny, limited piece of land is living under very inhumane living conditions, disconnected from the basic needs and infrastructure of water, wastewater, and electricity.




After almost four months of fighting in Gaza, the local health system has all but collapsed. (AFP)

“They are on a daily hunt for food, for shelter, for adequate quantities of water. Some families are actually using seawater to take a shower every 10 days.”

Most families do not have access to hygiene kits or potable water to help prevent infections and the spread of diseases. Many do not even have clothes for new babies to wear.

UNICEF estimates that some 20,000 Palestinian children have been born in the Gaza Strip since the Israeli military offensive began in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7.

According to data from the World Health Organization, there are more than 52,000 pregnant women in Gaza, among whom 183 are giving birth every day on average. A minimum of 15 of these require a cesarean section — equivalent to more than 700 per month.

Before the conflict, maternal mortality stood at 28.5 per 100,000 live births. This rate is likely to have risen dramatically given the lack of access to adequate care, the lack of electricity to power refrigerators to keep essential medicines, poor nutrition, and inadequate hydration.




Poor sanitation and a cold winter have added to the dire conditions faced by babies and new mothers during the war. (AFP)

And it is not just expectant and new mothers who are at risk. Newborns and small children also face the threat of injury and illness amid the bombardment, poor sanitation, cramped conditions, and frigid winter temperatures.

Since mid-October, more than 145,528 cases of diarrhea have been reported through syndromic surveillance by the Gaza Health Ministry at displacement camps managed by the UN Relief and Works Agency.

More than half of these cases were reported among children under the age of 5 — a significant increase compared to the monthly average of 2,000 reported throughout 2021 and 2022.

Thousands of children have been killed in the bombing, while thousands more have suffered injuries, including severe burns and the loss of limbs. Many other children are unaccounted for, either separated from their parents or trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings.

Just 15 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain partially functioning. Meanwhile, 80 percent of primary healthcare facilities are no longer in operation due to the lack of fuel, water, and vital medical supplies or because they have sustained damage.

FASTFACTS

• 20k Palestinian children born in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7.

• 50k Pregnant women in Gaza, with 180 giving birth every day.

• 155k Pregnant and breastfeeding women deemed to have poor nutrition.

Source: WHO, UNHCR

Those remaining hospitals are operating at many times their intended capacity. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, occupancy rates now stand at 351 percent in inpatient departments and 261 percent in intensive care units.

Nurses are having to turn away many women in labor due to capacity issues, leaving expectant mothers with no option but to give birth in public places, cars, or makeshift shelters, which are often cramped, dirty, and exposed to the elements.

As a result, Mhanna of ICRC said babies were being born “in the most dire humanitarian situation” with “no access to proper nutrition, warmth and hygiene.”

He added: “Some families are struggling also with providing baby milk because it is extremely expensive. Even diapers have become very expensive, the same as many, many other food and non-food items in Gaza.




The maternal mortality rate — 28.5 per 100,000 live births pre-war — is likely to have risen dramatically given the lack of access to adequate care. (AFP)

“On top of that, there is still an absence of safety and security, as well as a staggering level of psychological distress, frustration, depression, anxiety in which children and their parents live.

“We have witnessed many cases of children being the only survivors among their entire families, and there is no future for them.”

UNICEF is particularly concerned about the nutrition of more than 155,000 pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers, as well as more than 135,000 children under 2, given their specific nutrition needs and vulnerability.

Since running an assessment in late December, UNICEF has found that dietary diversity for pregnant and breastfeeding women is severely compromised.

“Expectant and new mothers are exhausted and terrified,” UNICEF’s regional spokesperson Ammar told Arab News. “They are doing everything they can to keep themselves and their babies alive, but they are fighting against the current.

“They do not have adequate nutrition and are exposed to ongoing hostilities, unsafe water and rising cases of numerous diseases. If they make it to a hospital, they get a brief moment of medical care before being thrust back into the chaos of the streets.”




Pregnant women and newborns are especially vulnerable amid a shortage of medical staff and pain relief. (AFP)

Indicative of the traumas faced by Gaza’s new mothers and their families is the story Ammar recalled of another woman he encountered in a hospital during his recent visit to the embattled enclave.

Jwaner, who had given birth just an hour earlier, told Ammar she had no clothes or diapers for her newborn son, Mohammed. The boy was already weak, she said, because she had hardly eaten anything during the last two weeks of her pregnancy.

Mohammed spent just the first hour of his life in an incubator before mother and baby were discharged back to the family’s tent in Rafah, where his 12 siblings waited. “All of them are sick from the cold weather — coughing and fever,” Jwaner told Ammar.

“I don’t have any proper food, even flour to make bread. Most of the children sleep all day because they are so weak and hungry.”

Aid agencies say that unless an immediate humanitarian ceasefire is secured, allowing safe and uninhibited humanitarian deliveries, the plight of Gaza’s most vulnerable will only get worse — scarring an entire generation.


Syria unable to import wheat or fuel due to US sanctions, trade minister says

Syria unable to import wheat or fuel due to US sanctions, trade minister says
Updated 07 January 2025
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Syria unable to import wheat or fuel due to US sanctions, trade minister says

Syria unable to import wheat or fuel due to US sanctions, trade minister says
  • The sanctions were imposed during Assad’s rule, targeting his government and also state institutions such as the central bank

DAMASCUS: Syria is unable to make deals to import fuel, wheat or other key goods due to strict US sanctions and despite many countries, including Gulf Arab states, wanting to do so, Syria’s new trade minister said.
In an interview with Reuters at his office in Damascus, Maher Khalil Al-Hasan said Syria’s new ruling administration had managed to scrape together enough wheat and fuel for a few months but the country faces a “catastrophe” if sanctions are not frozen or lifted soon.
Hasan is a member of the new caretaker government set up by Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham after it launched a lightning offensive that toppled autocratic President Bashar Assad on Dec. 8 after 13 years of civil war.
The sanctions were imposed during Assad’s rule, targeting his government and also state institutions such as the central bank.
Russia and Iran, both major backers of the Assad government, previously provided most of Syria’s wheat and oil products but both stopped doing so after the rebels triumphed and Assad fled to Moscow.
The US is set to announce an easing of restrictions on providing humanitarian aid and other basic services such as electricity to Syria while maintaining its strict sanctions regime, people briefed on the matter told Reuters on Monday.
The exact impact of the expected measures remains to be seen.
The decision by the outgoing Biden administration aims to send a signal of goodwill to Syria’s people and its new Islamist rulers, and pave the way for improving basic services and living conditions in the war-ravaged country.
At the same time, US officials see the sanctions as a key point of leverage with a new ruling group that was designated a terrorist entity by Washington several years ago but which, after breaking with Islamist militant group Al Qaeda, has recently signalled a more moderate approach.
Washington wants to see Damascus embark on an inclusive political transition and to cooperate on counterterrorism and other matters.
Hasan told Reuters he was aware of reports that some sanctions may soon be eased or frozen.


Libya military says air strikes target smuggling sites

Libya military says air strikes target smuggling sites
Updated 07 January 2025
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Libya military says air strikes target smuggling sites

Libya military says air strikes target smuggling sites
  • The Libyan Army said the air strikes “targeted and destroyed fuel trafficking sites in Zawiya, specifically in Asban,” a semi-rural area outside of the city

ZAWIYAH, Libya: Libya’s UN-recognized authorities have launched air strikes targeting drug trafficking and fuel smuggling hubs west of the capital, a military statement said on Monday.
It remained unclear if there were casualties from the strikes in Zawiya, a city on the Mediterranean coast about 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of the capital Tripoli.
Libya was plunged into chaos after a NATO-backed uprising toppled and killed strongman Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, with armed groups exploiting the situation to fund their activities through fuel smuggling and the trafficking of migrants.
The Libyan Army said the air strikes “targeted and destroyed fuel trafficking sites in Zawiya, specifically in Asban,” a semi-rural area outside of the city.
It also called on locals to clear areas it labelled as “strongholds for trafficking and crime.”
In May 2023, the Tripoli-based government carried out drone strikes as part of an anti-smuggling operation, killing at least two people and injuring several others, authorities said at the time.
Those strikes followed clashes between armed groups suspected of involvement in human trafficking and smuggling of fuel and other contraband goods.
Libya’s eastern-based parliament accused the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity of targeting the home of one of its lawmakers, an opponent of the government.
Libya is divided between the Tripoli-based GNU and a rival administration in the east, backed by military strongman Khalifa Haftar.
Footage posted on the army’s Facebook page showed a military truck smashing into the facade of a small dwelling.
Other footage showed tanks and pickup trucks mounted with machine guns driving through Zawiya.
The city hosts Libya’s second-largest oil refinery, with smugglers trafficking the fuel across the border into neighboring Tunisia.
 

 


UN envoy in rare Yemen visit to push for peace

UN envoy in rare Yemen visit to push for peace
Updated 07 January 2025
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UN envoy in rare Yemen visit to push for peace

UN envoy in rare Yemen visit to push for peace
  • Grundberg’s office said his visit would also “support the release of the arbitrarily detained UN, NGO, civil society and diplomatic mission personnel”

SANAA: Hans Grundberg, the United Nation’s special envoy for war-torn Yemen, arrived Monday in the rebel-held capital in a bid to breathe life into peace talks, his office said.
Grundberg last visited the capital Sanaa, controlled by the Iran-backed Houthis, in May 2023 for meetings with the rebels’ leaders in an earlier effort to advance a roadmap for peace.
The envoy’s current visit “is part of his ongoing efforts to urge for concrete and essential actions... for advancing the peace process,” Grundberg’s office said in a statement.
Yemen has been at war since 2014, when the Houthis forced the internationally recognized government out of Sanaa. The rebels have also seized population centers in the north.
A UN-brokered ceasefire in April 2022 calmed fighting and in December 2023 the warring parties committed to a peace process.
But tensions have surged during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, as the Houthis struck Israeli targets and international shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, in a campaign the rebels say is in solidarity with Palestinians.
In response to the Houthi attacks, Israel as well as the United States and Britain have hit Houthi targets in Yemen over the past year. One Israeli raid hit Sanaa’s international airport.
Grundberg’s office said his visit would also “support the release of the arbitrarily detained UN, NGO, civil society and diplomatic mission personnel.”
Dozens of staff from UN and other humanitarian organizations have been detained by the rebels, most of them since June, with the Houthis accusing them of belonging to a “US-Israeli spy network,” a charge the United Nations denies.
 

 


US says anti-Daesh operation in Iraq kills coalition soldier

US army soldiers stand on duty at the K1 airbase northwest of Kirkuk in northern Iraq on March 29, 2020. (AFP)
US army soldiers stand on duty at the K1 airbase northwest of Kirkuk in northern Iraq on March 29, 2020. (AFP)
Updated 07 January 2025
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US says anti-Daesh operation in Iraq kills coalition soldier

US army soldiers stand on duty at the K1 airbase northwest of Kirkuk in northern Iraq on March 29, 2020. (AFP)
  • US officials have said Daesh is hoping to stage a comeback in Syria following the fall in December of Syrian President Bashar Assad

WASHINGTON: The US military said on Monday operations against Daesh in Iraq over the past week led to the death of a non-US coalition soldier and wounded two other non-US personnel.
It also detailed operations in Syria against Daesh militants led by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, including one that resulted in the capture of what the US military’s Central Command said was an Daesh attack cell leader.
US officials have said Daesh is hoping to stage a comeback in Syria following the fall in December of Syrian President Bashar Assad.  

 


West Bank camp under fire as Palestinian forces face off militants

West Bank camp under fire as Palestinian forces face off militants
Updated 07 January 2025
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West Bank camp under fire as Palestinian forces face off militants

West Bank camp under fire as Palestinian forces face off militants
  • Gunshots occasionally rung out from inside the camp, an AFP correspondent reported this week

JENIN, Palestinian Territories: A month into a crackdown by Palestinian security forces on militants in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the streets of Jenin refugee camp are deserted, except for a few residents briefly checking on their homes.
Shops are closed, and militants have erected metal barricades to block Palestinian forces, in the area where Israeli army raids are more common.
Black military vehicles from the Palestinian Authority (PA), which exercises limited control over the West Bank, are stationed beyond roadblocks at the camp’s entrances.
“I only came back to check on my house,” said Muayyad Al-Saadi, a 53-year-old resident of Jenin camp, riding a bicycle down roads stripped of pavement.
Saadi, one of around 17,000 Palestinians who live in the camp, fled when clashes began in early December, citing a lack of electricity and running water.
The fighting, triggered by the arrests of several militants, has involved Palestinian militant factions affiliated with opponents of the PA’s leadership.
One of these factions, the Jenin Battalion, is largely made up of fighters affiliated with Islamic Jihad or Hamas, whose October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered war in Gaza.
Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007, is the main political rival of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party, which dominates the PA.

Fourteen Palestinians have been killed, including six security forces, seven civilians, and one gunman in the clashes.
Gunshots occasionally rung out from inside the camp, an AFP correspondent reported this week.
Since bakeries have closed, an unusually long line stretched from a shop that delivers bread from outside the camp.
“I’ve lived through wars since I was eight years old,” said the shopkeeper, Umm Hani, who is in her 70s.
She said there was “never anything like this” since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, when Israel captured the West Bank.
“Let them (the security forces) come and arrest whoever they want. We have nothing to do with it,” said Umm Hani.
Another woman, in her 30s, said: “Everyone wants to speak out, but they’re afraid of repercussions from both sides.”
“We’re suffering. We can’t leave or enter the camp freely.”
The intra-Palestinian clashes erupted amid a major PA raid on the camp after the December 5 arrest of a Jenin Battalion commander on charges of possessing weapons and illicit funds.
Armed factions in Jenin and elsewhere see themselves as more effective resistance to Israeli occupation than the PA, which coordinates security matters with Israel.
“They (the PA) don’t want any resistance against the occupation,” said a fighter carrying an M16 rifle, blocking a road with militants.

The militants accuse the PA of cutting off the water and power supply to the camp, a claim the Ramallah-based authority denies.
“The gunmen fire at electricity and water crews whenever they attempt to repair the networks,” Anwar Rajab, spokesman for the PA forces, told AFP.
He said militants were also shooting at distributors of food aid.
Rajab added that the PA was trying to spare civilians, accusing militants instead of disrupting the lives of residents.
“We’re not besieging the camp. People are entering and leaving the camp normally.”
One gunman said the fighting has been “incredibly difficult for civilians. They have no water, no food, and they’ve stopped working.”
Walls throughout the camp are riddled with bullet holes, some from past Israeli army incursions and others from the recent fighting.
A 19-year-old Hamas fighter, who requested anonymity, said residents of Jenin camp have been exposed to violence long before the current operation.
“Every house here has a martyr, a prisoner or an injured person,” he said.
The fighter accused the PA’s forces of firing indiscriminately.
Both sides have traded blame for the deaths of the seven civilians, including a father and son killed on a rooftop on Friday.
“If they’re targeting us — the resistance factions and the Jenin Battalion — why don’t they come for us directly instead of targeting civilians?” said the young militant.