PCHR: Hamas gunmen shot three men in Jabaliya

Gunmen wearing the headbands of the armed wing of Hamas shot and wounded three civilians in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza, last Thursday evening, a leading human rights organization reported on Sunday.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights’ (PCHR) investigation found that at around 9:30pm on Thursday, gunmen fired at three young men near the As-Sultan apartment building in the city of Jabaliya.

PCHR identified the three wounded men as:

Isma’il Mohammed Mousa Dardona, 30, who was wounded by six bullets to the feet and sustained shrapnel wounds;

Mus’ab Mohammed Ibrahim Dardona, 29, who was wounded by three bullets to his left leg and 10 shrapnel wounds throughout the body; and

Khaled Mohammed Mohammed Dardona, 30, who was wounded by three bullets to the feet.

In addition, a bystander, Yousif Khamis Jneid, 24, was wounded in the feet by two bullets.

One of the wounded civilians, Khaled Dardona, said that gunmen wearing on their heads signs with “Izz Addin Al-Qassam Brigades” fired at him and at his two companions from a distance of approximately five meters. Khaled told PCHR that he fled to a nearby pharmacy, while his companions fell to the ground and the gunmen continued to fire at them.

He added that immediately after the incident, a white Land Rover arrived at the scene, and gunmen in civilian clothes stepped down from the car. The gunmen took him and Isma’il to the car and transferred them to the Kamal ‘Odwan Hospital. Local civilians brought the third wounded civilian to hospital in a civilians’ car.

Captain Atef al-Louh, Director of Jabalia Police Station, told PCHR that the police have opened an investigation into the incident. Police have checked the scene and taken testimonies from eyewitnesses.

Source: Maan News Agency

UN human rights chief “shocked” at US boycott of racism summit

The UN’s highest authority on human rights said she was “shocked and deeply disappointed” at a US decision to boycott the Durban Review Conference against racism, which opens on Monday in Geneva.

"I am shocked and deeply disappointed by the United States decision not to attend a conference that aims to combat racism, xenophobia, racial discrimination and other forms of intolerance worldwide," said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay in a statement released on the conference’s official website on Sunday.

US president Barack Obama confirmed on Sunday that the US would join Australia, Canada, Israel and Italy in refusing to attend the meeting, which is aimed at reviewing goals set out in Durban, South Africa in 2001.

The US and Israel stormed out of the original Durban summit over remarks that identified Israel as a perpetrator of racism towards Palestinians.

The 64-page Declaration and Program of Action (DDPA) endorsed at the conference affirms “the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to the establishment of an independent State.” The document also says that “the Holocaust must never be forgotten.”

Though the 17-page document for this year’s review conference removes all references to the Palestinians, the US says the current draft does not go far enough by not negating the offending sections of the 2001 declaration.

"I would love to be involved in a useful conference that addressed continuing issues of racism and discrimination around the globe," Obama said in Trinidad on Sunday after attending the Summit of the Americas, according to AP.

But he said the draft declaration reaffirms the whole of the document from the 2001 summit at which "folks expressed antagonism toward Israel in ways that were often times completely hypocritical and counterproductive."

"We expressed in the run-up to this conference our concerns that if you adopted all of the language from 2001, that's not something we can sign up for," Obama said, according to AP.

UN High Commissioner Pillay responded to this concern in her statement, saying, "I believe that difficulty could have been overcome. It would have been possible to make it clear in a footnote that the US had not affirmed the original document and therefore is not in a position to reaffirm it, which is a routine practice in multilateral negotiations to enable consensus-building while allowing for individual positions to be expressed. … And then we could have all moved on together, and put the problems of 2001 behind us."

"I fail to see why, given that the Middle East is not mentioned in this document, that politics related to the Middle East continue to intrude into the process," Pillay said.

Source: Maan News Agency

Philippines: ICRC confirms kidnapped staff member is free

Manila / Geneva (ICRC) – Andreas Notter, one of three International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) staff members, who were abducted in the southern Philippines on 15 January, is now free. He spent 93 days in captivity.

Mr Notter is being looked after by colleagues from the ICRC. He is safe, well and happy that he will soon be back with his family. However, his thoughts are with Eugenio Vagni, with whom he shared the kidnapping ordeal and who is not yet free.

The ICRC was informed that Mr Notter was free by the Philippine authorities at around 8:00am Manila time on 18 April.

“We are, of course, very relieved that Andreas will soon be back in the arms of his loved ones,” said Alain Aeschlimann, the ICRC's head of operations for East Asia, South-East Asia and the Pacific. “But we remain very concerned about Eugenio’s safety and we call on the abductors to let him go safely, immediately and unconditionally.”

Referring to recent official and behind-the-scenes endeavours to resolve the ordeal, Mr Aeschlimann said the ICRC appreciated all genuine efforts that had been made by national and local authorities.

Mr Notter and Mr Vagni were kidnapped in mid-January, along with Mary Jean Lacaba, near the Jolo Provincial jail, where they were working on a water and sanitation project. Mrs Lacaba was released on 2 April.

Sudan: responding to humanitarian needs in rural areas

Over recent weeks, the ICRC has helped to fight a meningitis outbreak in Darfur. Along the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the ICRC has assisted 18,000 people displaced by violence.

A meningitis outbreak in Darfur

In close cooperation with the Sudanese Red Crescent and other components of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the ICRC is responding to life-threatening situations, including those emanating from the gap left by international non-governmental organisations expelled in March, especially in remote areas of Darfur where few other humanitarian organizations are working.

On 27 March, the ICRC started a vaccination campaign against the deadly disease of meningitis in the towns of Kutrum, Kati and Thur and their surrounding areas in the region of Jebel Marra, in central Darfur. The Ministry of Health had declared an outbreak of the disease on 11 March. ICRC health staff are supervising the campaign, while the WHO and UNICEF, along with the Khartoum-based MSF-Switzerland, are supplying the vaccines.

Fifteen ICRC staff have joined forces with dozens of Sudanese-trained vaccinators to contain the disease as quickly as possible by focusing their efforts on specific areas.

"This operation is difficult to coordinate, since it involves such factors as maintaining the cold chain and ensuring that the medical supplies used are in suitable condition," said Vincent Ochilet, head of the ICRC's sub-delegation in Zalingei. "The security situation will also affect the pace at which the vaccinations take place and the extent of the territory covered."

Sudan is part of what is commonly called Sub-Saharan Africa's "meningitis belt," which extends from Ethiopia in the east to Guinea-Bissau and Gambia in the west, and includes Chad and the Central African Republic, Eritrea, Uganda and Kenya. This new wave of meningitis broke out in February 2009 and has already affected dozens of people, resulting in several deaths in the area of Western Jebel Marra.

"A decade has passed since the last big outbreak and we have to be vigilant," said Frances Devlin, ICRC primary health coordinator in Sudan. "Communication within Jebel Marra is very difficult and there may be other pockets of meningitis we are not aware of."

So far, 31,323 people in Kutrum, Thur, Kurfal, Buldong and Kati have been vaccinated and the campaign is moving to Gildo next week. The objective is to vaccinate more than 65 percent of the population between 2 and 30 years of age in this mountainous region exposed to the disease.

Clean drinking water for displaced people in Muhajiriyya, South Darfur

Tens of thousands of people displaced from the Muhajiriyya and Labado areas are said to have sought refuge in and around Khazzan Jadeed after an armed opposition group launched a military offensive against the towns.

ICRC water engineers spent two days and two nights in the Khazzan Jadeed area repairing 17 hand pumps, thus bringing clean drinking water to the local communities and the displaced people there. They also trained eight local water technicians to maintain the pumps and supplied the town’s water committee with the tools needed for regular maintenance of all 28 hand pumps in the area. Meanwhile, in Labado, the ICRC set up a water distribution point by manufacturing and erecting a water tower and extending pipes from a new borehole to the water tank.

An earlier ICRC assessment had reported that access to water in both areas was very poor and could lead to communal tensions. More than half of the hand pumps in the Khazzan Jadeed area needed repairs.

Emergency aid for victims of Malakal fighting

Heavy fighting at the end of February between Sudanese Army units and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in the southern city of Malakal left dozens of people dead and injured.

With the agreement of both parties to the conflict, ICRC staff contacted the Malakal Civil Hospital – the main hospital in the city, where most civilian and some military casualties are taken – for information about its needs.

"Two days after the fighting began, ICRC aircraft delivered urgently needed medical supplies and evacuated some of the wounded soldiers to Khartoum for further treatment," said Olivier Charmes, the ICRC delegate in charge of the Malakal operation.

Kits for treating war-wounded people, dressing materials and other medical supplies were donated to the Malakal Civil Hospital and two military medical units to enable both sides to deal with the large number of casualties.

A military hospital belonging to the United Nations Mission in Sudan received at least 10 military and civilian casualties. With the agreement of all parties involved, the ICRC arranged to transfer some of the wounded military personnel from this hospital to their own areas after they received treatment.

The Sudanese Red Crescent branch in Malakal helped collect dead bodies and take them to the hospital. A total of 31 civilians were reported to have lost their lives and 52 to have been injured.

Essential assistance for displaced people in the south

For several months now, following an upsurge in violence caused by the Lord's Resistance Army, people have been crossing into Southern Sudan from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in search of safety.

The violence spilled over into Southern Sudan, forcing Congolese refugees and Sudanese civilians to leave everything behind and flee to the Sudanese states of Western and Central Equatoria. More than 43,500 Sudanese are estimated to be displaced inside the country, with nearly 18,000 Congolese seeking refuge in Southern Sudan. Among the refugees are unaccompanied children, some of whom are too young to explain who they are or where they came from.

ICRC staff in Juba and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, along with their partners from the Sudanese Red Crescent Society and the Red Cross Society of the Democratic Republic of the Congo,are tracing displaced persons and unaccompanied children in the area. The ICRC is also providing displaced children and their host families with clean drinking water and household essentials.

Thanks to the cross-border Red Cross and Red Crescent network, news has been conveyed between people separated by the latest upsurge of violence, and several children have been able to return to their families. For those still waiting to be reunited with their loved ones, however, the anguish continues.

By March, nearly 18,000 people had received blankets, kitchen sets, plastic sheeting, soap and jerrycans in Maridi, Ezo and Naandi in Western Equatoria.