Day: August 22, 2022

The US and South Korean troops started their joint military exercises on Monday amid ongoing tension on the Korean Peninsula, local media reported.

The 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) exercises involved an array of contingency drills like concurrent field maneuvers that were not held over the past years, Yonhap News Agency reported.

These regular annual drills are defense-oriented in nature and aimed at strengthening the allies’ joint combat readiness, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

This year, the two allies are also planning to conduct a set of field training, including firing drills.

Last year, North Korea strongly criticized the military drills and launched several missile tests in reaction.

The UFS will incorporate drills for various real-life scenarios, including the discovery of improvised explosive devices at nuclear power plants, a fire at a semiconductor factory, paralysis of a banking network, terrorism at airports and drone attacks, the agency quoted the Defense Ministry as saying.

The allies plan to conduct 13 combined field training programs during the joint drill.

Ahead of these exercises, on Wednesday North Korea test-fired two cruise missiles toward the Yellow Sea.

On Friday, Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, while rejecting the South Korean president’s economic incentive offer, said: “A knave who talks about the bold plan today and stages anti-North war exercises tomorrow is none other than mastermind (South Korean President) Yoon Suk-yeol.”

Last month, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un also warned South Korea against any military action.

“Such a dangerous attempt would be punished immediately by powerful forces, and the Yoon Suk-yeol administration and his military would be wiped out,” Kim said while addressing an event in the capital Pyongyang.

Tension on the peninsula rose in 2020 when North Korea attacked and blew up the inter-Korean liaison office along the border. Seoul has threatened a strong response if Pyongyang “further worsens the situation.”

However, tensions soared further last year when both Seoul and Pyongyang ramped up military drills to show off their might.

The US and South Korea have made repeated offers of dialogue with North Korea in order to defuse current tensions on the peninsula, but it has yet to respond.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Two more ships have left Ukrainian ports under the Istanbul grain export deal, the Turkish National Defense Ministry said on Monday.

A ministry statement, which did not disclose the point of origin of the two ships, said shipments from Ukrainian ports are continuing as planned.

Türkiye, the UN, Russia, and Ukraine signed an agreement in Istanbul on July 22 to resume grain exports from the Ukrainian Black Sea ports of Yuzhny, Chornomorsk and Odesa, which were halted due to the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its sixth month.

A Joint Coordination Center with officials from the three countries and the UN has been set up in Istanbul to oversee the shipments.

Since the first ship left Ukraine under the deal on Aug. 1, over 656,000 tons of Ukrainian grain have been delivered to world markets.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Adel Idriss will never forget the day he lost his brother and cousin while they were performing the dawn prayer at Al-Ibrahimi Mosque in the old city of Hebron on the second Friday of Ramadan.

On that day, Idriss was the imam or leader of the prayer, and he still remembers the horrible moment when Israeli extremist Baruch Goldstein opened fire on the worshippers with a machine gun.

The gruesome attack on Feb. 25, 1994 left 29 people dead and dozens of others wounded.

“I lost my brother Saleem and the other was injured. Also, our family lost my cousin, Diab Al Karaki. We were fasting, unarmed civilians performing our Islamic worship in the holy month of Ramadan when he attacked us in a horrible crime,” Idriss told Anadolu Agency.

Palestinians say the attack was planned by a group of Jewish settlers with indirect assistance from the Israeli army, who was not present during the massacre.

Muslims attach great importance to Al-Ibrahimi Mosque, as they believe it was built above the tomb of Prophet Ibrahim (Prophet Abraham).

Following the massacre, the religious life of the Muslims in Hebron and their ability to reach the mosque were changed due to Israeli military restrictions that were imposed against the entire old city, which is located south of Jerusalem.

“Since the day of the massacre, the Israeli forces have banned us from making the azhan (or call to prayer) every Saturday, and during the Jewish religious holidays, Muslims are never allowed to enter the mosque to pray, it’s completely closed to Muslims,” Idriss said.

During those days, workers in the mosque are also not allowed to enter it.

“The Israeli occupation partially opens the confiscated parts of the mosque mainly on Fridays during Ramadan and the two Islamic Eids, annual festivals of Islam which are associated with Ramadan and the Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca,” Ghassan Rajabi, the director of Al-Ibrahimi Mosque, told Anadolu Agency.

According to Rajabi, 63% of the mosque’s 2,050 square meters (22,066 square feet) of floor space was confiscated along with all of its courtyards by a military decision and converted into a Jewish synagogue.

“For Muslims who want to pray in the mosque, they must pass through three to six military checkpoints to be allowed to enter it. At the last checkpoint at the entrance of the mosque, they must give their identity cards to the soldiers,” he said.

For the Palestinians in Hebron, the massacre was a critical point that affected their lives deeply, socially, economically and religiously.

Idriss said the aggressive military restrictions forced him and his family to leave the old city after 40 years.

“It wasn’t easy to leave, but their policies against us forced us to seek another home to live in,” he said.

Meanwhile, the people of Hebron say they are suffering from the behavior of the extremist settlers there, exposed to continuous assaults and insults against their religious beliefs and the Prophet Mohammad, particularly during Jewish religious holidays.

Their plight continues as the world marks Aug. 22 as the International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief. According to the UN, it is a day to recognize the importance of providing victims of acts of violence based on religion or belief and members of their families appropriate support and assistance in accordance with applicable laws.

Anadolu Agency website contains only a portion of the news stories offered to subscribers in the AA News Broadcasting System (HAS), and in summarized form. Please contact us for subscription options.

Source: Anadolu Agency

From the roofs of inundated mud houses, it was an incredible sight earlier this week to see two polio vaccinators wading through waist-deep rainwaters to deliver vaccines.

They were headed to a remote village in northwest Pakistan where their colleagues were engaged in administering jabs to children.

Raging floods caused by ongoing torrential monsoon rains have submerged large swathes of Pakistan, but unfazed polio vaccinators are administering jabs to children under 5 in many parts of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, which borders Afghanistan. The province is the hardest hit by polio.

A short video on social media shows men carefully cuddling the blue vaccine boxes and trying to maintain their balance in the gushing muddy brown rainwaters in the remote village of Dera Ismail Khan, a southern district in KP.

It prompted a barrage of praise for the vaccinators, who have been leading the country’s anti-polio fight against the odds.

Meager salaries, armed attacks and on top of all, refusal from parents to get their children vaccinated on faux religious grounds, have led the South Asian nation to continuously miss the mark of a polio-free country.

The country has seen a surge in armed attacks on polio vaccinators, mainly in KP, coinciding with the capture of Kabul in Afghanistan by the Taliban last August.

“Vaccinating the nation’s future is an honor for us. But, no doubt, it’s dangerous as well, particularly in the tribal region, and other remote parts of KP,” said Naseebullah Khan, a polio vaccinator from Peshawar, the capital of KP.

Khan, a father of three, confirmed to Anadolu Agency that many vaccinators have refused to continue to work in vulnerable areas in recent years due to armed attacks and threats.

In the latest attack, assailants gunned down two policemen guarding a team of vaccinators in KP’s Tank district, earlier this week.

Some militant groups often target vaccinators, mainly in border areas of KP and southwestern Baluchistan.

They see anti-polio campaigns as part of an elaborate anti-Muslim, Western conspiracy and often issue death threats to vaccinators, many of whom are women, for administrating the vital vaccines to children.

Many, especially in rural Pakistan, reckon that the vaccine is part of a Western conspiracy, which aims to sterilize Muslim children.

Media reports said around 150 people associated with the drive, including security personnel, have been killed in Pakistan since December 2012.

“The danger (of attack) is continuously lurking but we are not going to give up. It’s a do-or-die situation for Pakistan because there is no cure for polio,” said Khan.

– Target was nearly achieved

Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif launched the new phase of polio vaccination Friday that involves 108 districts.

Pakistan is one of two countries, the other is Afghanistan, where polio still exists and the country remains under a polio-linked travel restriction imposed by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The UN health agency made it mandatory in 2014 for all those traveling from Pakistan to carry a polio vaccination certificate. The ban has been extended every six months.

Fourteen cases, 13 in the restive North Waziristan tribal region near the Afghanistan border, have been reported from different parts of the country in 2022, according to official statistics.

Last year, one polio case was reported in the South Asian nuclear country compared to 84 in 2020 and 179 in 2019.

“We had almost achieved the target as only one case was reported last year. The second case surfaced after 14 months,” Dr. Shahzad Asif Baig, national coordinator of the National Emergency Operations Center for Polio Eradication, told Anadolu Agency.

According to the WHO standards, a country needs to be without a single case for three consecutive years to be declared polio-free.

Apart from armed attacks, Baig enumerated the refusal of parents and “fake finger marking” as key reasons behind the resurgence of cases in Pakistan.

“Almost 98% of the targeted children are vaccinated every time. The issue is arising because of this 2% due to refusal from parents and the fake finger marking by our vaccinators,” he said.

A majority of vaccinators, he said, belong to local communities, who either under the influence of their own beliefs or on parents’ insistence do not administer the vaccine but simply mark the thumbs of their children.

“Our monitoring teams assess the number of vaccinated children through marked thumbs. Unfortunately, some of them are just marked but actually not vaccinated,” according to Baig.

After the resurgence of cases, authorities ordered an inquiry a few months ago that revealed the foul play.

“In order to contain this problem, polio vaccinators in troubled areas have been ordered to gather the children at an open space or community center to administer the vaccine in front of the health officials,” he said.

-‘More focused’ approach required

The rate of parents’ refusal and fake marking is not more than 2%, according to Dr. Rana Safdar, a senior adviser to the US Centers for Disease Control, which has been assisting Islamabad in its fight against polio.

“Some 90% of Pakistanis have no doubts about polio vaccination. Half of the remaining 10% have some doubts, which can be cleared through a well-designed communication strategy, “ Safdar told Anadolu Agency.

He said, however, that an “intense community engagement” is required to persuade the remaining 5% of those who are wrongly convinced against vaccination.

Safdar observed that a “less-coordinated” approach compared to the previous two years, has resulted in a surge in cases.

“We had launched effective door-to-door campaigns, with special focus on vulnerable zones in 2020, and 2021, taking advantage of the coordination among different government departments, which was created during the country’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic. That campaign ultimately resulted in a deep decline in the number of polio cases,” said Safdar, who is a former national coordinator of the government’s polio eradication program. “We need to repeat the same better strategies to attain the desired results.”

Endorsing Safdar’s views, Abid Iqbal, a Karachi-based vaccinator, said that a recently adopted strategy involving communication officers from local communities has helped to persuade “ignorant” parents.

After the new strategy, Iqbal told Anadolu Agency, the refusal rate has dropped by 60% to 70% in Karachi, home to 20 million people.

Meager salaries and bereft of other incentives, according to Iqbal, have been affecting the efficiency of vaccinators.

A vaccinator, usually hired temporarily from the local community, receives a little more than PKR 10,000 ($47) per week.

– Help of religious leaders

Characterizing a huge cross-border movement between Pakistan and Afghanistan as a key reason behind virus travel, Safdar urged the two neighbors to produce a “more coordinated” strategy to contain the virus spread.

The resurgence of cases has forced health authorities to again seek the help of religious leaders to woo defiant parents.

“We have long been in contact with the religious leaders to persuade the parents, particularly in remote areas, to get their children vaccinated. And let me tell you, it really helped,” said Baig.

In many areas, he said, religious scholars apportion a part of Friday sermons to highlight the importance of the polio vaccine.

Source: Anadolu Agency