Islamic Jihad Leader: Palestinians Creating New Equations in Confrontation with Zionist Enemy


TEHRAN (FNA)- Secretary General of the Gaza-based Islamic Jihad movement Ziad Al-Nakhala said Palestinian people are more energetic than ever before in their confrontation with the Zionist regime.

Nakhala made the remarks in a Monday conference themed “Palestine, the Central Issue of Islamic Ummah”, which was held in the Yemeni capital city of Sana'a, presstv reported.

“Our nation is faced with the Zionist regime’s onslaught, which seeks to Judaize Al-Quds and create new realities on the ground,” he stated, adding, “The Palestinian nation is creating new equations in its confrontation with the Zionist regime.”

Nakhala said the holding of this conference is another proof of Yemen's support for the Palestinian cause and that the aggressors in Yemen are approaching the Zionist regime despite the occupying entity’s Judaization moves and the destruction of the Palestinian nation's identity.

“The Zionists use military force and under the guise of international organizations exploit the compromising Arab countries that have recognized the legitimacy of this occupying regime. They also cause conflicts with the Palestinian people in order to take advantage of them,” the secretary general of the Islamic Jihad movement added.

Nakhala stated Palestinian people are facing plots by an enemy that has never ceased any efforts to dominate Al-Quds through the falsification of history and the massacre of people in Al-Aqsa Mosque.

“Despite Israeli efforts to Judaize Al-Aqsa Mosque and destroy the identity of the Palestinian people, the aggressors in Yemen are trying to get closer to the Zionist regime in any way possible,” Nakhala noted.

The Islamic Jihad’s chief underscored it is regrettable that Palestinians have been forsaken and have to fight against arrogance, Zionism and the siege imposed on them by some of their Arab brothers.

“The countdown for the Zionist regime has begun, and today it is rapidly going downhill on the domestic front and in its confrontation with the Palestinian intifadas (uprisings),” Nakhala underlined.

Palestinian officials and resistance groups have repeatedly voiced concerns over the Israeli regime’s plot to divide Al-Aqsa into Jewish and Muslim sections or set visiting times.

Israeli forces have repeatedly attacked Palestinian worshipers at the site since early April, with the onset of the holy month of Ramadan which coincided with Jewish Passover.

More than 150 Palestinian worshipers were injured when Israeli forces stormed the compound in the holy occupied city of Al-Quds’ Old City last week. The forces have kept up their violations on the flashpoint site besides cracking down on solidarity protests throughout the occupied West Bank.

The clashes in Al-Quds had sparked fears of another armed conflict similar to an 11-day war last year between Israel and Gaza-based Palestinian resistance groups, including Hamas.

Israel waged the war last May in response to Palestinian retaliation against violent raids on worshipers at Al-Aqsa Mosque and the regime’s plans to force a number of Palestinian families out of their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Al-Quds.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, 260 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli offensive, including 66 children and 40 women.

Majority of US Voters Would Consider Third Party If Faced with Trump vs Biden Rematch


TEHRAN (FNA)- A new poll by Harvard CAPS-Harris found that 58% of registered voters would consider a third party or independent candidate if faced with the prospect of choosing between Joe Biden and Donald Trump again.

Both men are extremely unpopular, with the poll also showing that a majority of Americans do not want either man to run. Sixty-three percent of respondents said they do not want Biden to seek a second term and 55% said they do not want Trump to run for president again, RIA Novosti reported.

Biden has seen his poll numbers plummet over the past year. A Gallup poll released last week showed that Biden’s 41% job approval rating is the second lowest since the 1950s for any president at this point in their term. The lowest was his predecessor, Trump.

It should come as no surprise then that voters would consider someone else with Biden and Trump at the top of the ticket, but third party candidates have not fared well in the United States since Ross Perot’s attempt in 1992.

Perot held a lead against rivals Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush but then dropped out in the middle of the campaign season. He reentered the race in October but by then the damage had already been done and Clinton won the presidency. Perot explained his behavior by accusing the Bush campaign of blackmailing him with doctored photos of his daughter. The Bush administration denied the claim.

The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) excluded Perot from the 1996 debates and no third party candidate has gotten a significant share of the vote since.

This new poll is a ray of hope for third party advocates. Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS-Harris poll, told The Hill that he has “never seen a number this high for an independent run”. He also called it “an unprecedented opportunity for an independent candidate to run and win".

Trump has hinted that he may run again in 2024, but has said he will not make a decision until after the midterm elections. Biden was non-committal on running for reelection during the campaign but reportedly told former President Barack Obama that he will seek another term. Age will be a factor for both men, Biden is 79 and Trump is 75.

Both men are likely to win their party’s primary if they run. Thirty-seven percent of voters said they would vote for Biden in a primary, higher than any other Democratic candidate. Trump has higher support among his base, with 58% of respondents saying they would vote for him.

With those numbers, it seems possible, if not likely, that a Trump versus Biden rematch is in the cards. And with the Republican party pulling out of the CPD, there may be no better opportunity for a third party candidate to make waves in the next election.

Crypto-Trading Addiction Is the ‘Reefer Madness’ of 2022

By Aaron Brown | Bloomberg
Today

As if all that’s going on in the world wasn’t enough to worry about, Bloomberg News reports that young people are seeking mental health treatment to break all-consuming cycles of cryptocurrency trading. Those profiled complained that frantic trading in the hopes of scoring quick riches in a rapidly growing, $2 trillion asset class led them to neglect ordinary life and destroyed their peace of mind.

This calls to my mind a conversation I had years ago with Ed Thorp, the mathematics professor who invented blackjack card counting and developed or refined most of the classic quantitative hedge fund strategies used today. His books in the 1960s, Beat the Dealer and Beat the Market, inspired many people — including me — to embark on lifetime journeys using mathematics to succeed in high-stakes gambles. I asked Ed whether he worried about people who came across his books and ruined their lives in unsuccessful emulation. “No,” he replied, “I think they would have gotten in trouble without my help.”

Like it or not, life is full of high stakes gambles. We expect high-school graduates to decide whether to bet hundreds of thousands of dollars in college expenses and missed wages in the hopes of increasing lifetime earnings by tens of thousands of dollars per year. We know many of them make poor choices. And that’s just one in a long series of future risk-taking. Choosing careers, getting married, starting businesses, making investments, joining the military, cheating on taxes — all are gambles.

How do young people learn to make wise risk decisions? Lectures and book learning can help, but mostly they learn from experience. Games are good for this, both sports and games with cards, dice or other randomizing elements. To understand risk, however, the stakes must be personally meaningful and the players must really care about the outcomes. And one of the most important qualities imparted is the courage to play games with meaningful stakes in the first place.

A necessary consequence of this is some people will hurt themselves. Training accidents in the military kill twice as many people in the service as combat. It’s not unreasonable to suggest a similar ratio for gambling — twice as many people require mental health treatment or lose all their money or ruin personal relationships, gambling or day trading or speculating in crypto, as face similar problems with “responsible” risk taking. A young person who makes these mistakes can get some rehab and restart life sadder but wiser, with no permanent damage. Those making their first serious investment decisions in middle-age may not recover so easily.

Financial trading — whether screaming in a Chicago trading pit, working in the trading room of a major dealer, running a hedge fund or trading crypto on your phone — is a particularly intense form of risk taking. It has a consuming thrill that makes ordinary life away from trading seem colorless and slow. Even quantitative traders who are a level removed from individual trading decisions feel the thrill as they agonize over decisions about tweaking their models or pulling the plug.

Long experience suggests that trading at the highest level cannot be done calmly. Professional traders learn to refine raw emotions such as fear and greed into equally strong but productive psychological intensity — just as top athletes are imbued with focused wills to win, and successful people in most fields learn to harness not just their brains, but their hearts, into what they do. “Protecting” young people from learning these techniques hurts them doubly. They remain vulnerable to raw emotions that lead to poor risk decisions, and they never experience the focused passion necessary for great success. Trying to reduce the psychological stress and financial losses of young people to zero may be like eliminating any dangerous training in the military — more overall damage, at much higher stakes.

Many regulators view “gamification” of finance with suspicion, along with crypto, day trading, options for individuals and other things that make learning about risk fun. They see the harm from the people who overdo it, but not the much larger gain from a citizenry equipped to deal intelligently with life’s risks.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Aaron Brown is a former managing director and head of financial market research at AQR Capital Management. He is the author of “The Poker Face of Wall Street.” He may have a stake in the areas he writes about.


©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

The biggest mistake of the pandemic is still haunting us

Contact tracing studies showed that outdoor transmission was rare and that indoors, time spent in the same room mattered more than distance between people 

(Photo: AP)

Updated: 26 Apr 2022,

Faye Flam, Bloomberg

The World Health Organization took two years to admit Covid-19 spread through airborne particles. We’re still dealing with the fallout.

We’re now being left to choose our own risks when it comes to Covid-19, but it’s clear that many people still don’t recognize the importance of fresh air. Some super-cautious people don’t seem to realize how much danger can be mitigated by socializing outdoors or opening windows. Others seem not to understand how much risk persists indoors even when others are more than six feet away.

One big reason the public may still be so confused: the World Health Organization’s long delay in recognizing that Covid was spreading through airborne transmission. On March 28, 2020, the WHO listed on its website as a “FACT" that “Covid19 is NOT airborne." Everyone was confused back then, so being wrong was understandable — but showing that degree of confidence was not. There were credible scientists at the time saying airborne spread was happening. Worse still, it took two years to change course — a delay experts pondered in a recent article in Nature, “Why WHO Took Two Years to Say Covid is Airborne." It was a mistake that eroded public trust and confused people about how to avoid the virus.

The problem, it turns out, was not one of evidence but burden of proof. The WHO officials thought they should assume Covid-19 was not airborne until they saw proof that it was. But why not assume it was airborne and put the burden of proof on other modes of transmission?

Looking back on my own columns on the question of how Coved was transmitted, I quoted different experts back in March of 2020 about the way infected people emit viral particles in little bits of saliva, from larger “droplets" that fall within six feet or smaller aerosols that can linger in indoor air and travel larger distances. Most experts favored droplets as Covid’s primary mode of spread, but others were very concerned about airborne transmission, in which the virus contaminates stagnant indoor air and spreads despite physical distancing and loose-fitting cloth masks.

It’s clear now and should have been clear then that the WHO had put the burden of proof in the wrong place.

One simple rule about scientific burden of proof was voiced by philosopher David Hume and popularized later by Carl Sagan: Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. When a revolutionary idea breaks all the rules — such as Einstein’s theory of relativity, which violated Newton’s laws — we don’t accept it without rigorous testing. Airborne transmission of Covid-19 was never an extraordinary idea, but the WHO nonetheless demanded an extraordinary level of proof.

But plenty of other diseases move through the air. Rather than insist that airborne transmission be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, the WHO should have used an approach called abductive reasoning. That’s when scientists consider which ideas best fit all the available evidence. Darwin used it in Origin of Species to describe why his theory of natural selection fit detailed observations of living things better than creationism or other ideas. With abductive reasoning, competing ideas might fit some of the evidence — but if they can’t explain the whole body of data as well as some other idea does, they take a back seat.

By late spring of 2020, multiple lines of evidence pointed to airborne spread as responsible for at least some cases of Covid-19. Contact tracing studies showed that outdoor transmission was rare and that indoors, time spent in the same room mattered more than distance between people. Other studies showed that the disease was spreading in bursts — most people didn’t give it to anyone, but a few gave it to huge numbers through so-called superspreading events, almost always indoor gatherings. This doesn’t rule out the other modes of transmission, like droplets transmitted at close range and contaminated surfaces, but it does suggest that airborne spread was playing an important role.

Science is a bit more malleable than many people think — it’s not about facts and proof but about hypotheses, observations, inferences, evidence, theories and consensus. Thinking about burden of proof often helps in evaluating health-related claims, where “no evidence" doesn’t necessarily mean wrong, and some evidence doesn’t mean you have the whole answer.

Even the term “airborne" can be confusing if it’s not translated into practical advice about how to avoid getting infected. Now that governments in the U.S. and Europe are moving away from mandates and expecting people to behave according to our own risk tolerance, it’s more important than ever for public health authorities to clarify how best to minimize risk for those who choose to do so.


Faye Flam is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and host of the podcast 'Follow the Science.' She has written for the Economist, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Psychology Today, Science and other publications.

Why Gen Z thinks they're the unluckiest generation in history

Members of Generation Z, born between 1996 and 2012, are “united by terror,” a new book claims. But they fail to realize just how fortunate they are. Getty Images

It’s the prerogative of every generation to think they’re living in uniquely unfortunate times.

But members of Gen Z really think they got a raw deal.

That’s the premise of “Fight: How Gen Z is Channeling Their Fear and Passion to Save America” (St. Martin’s Press), out now.

Born between roughly 1996 and 2012, the oldest members of Gen Z are now 26. They’ve already lived through “the opioid epidemic… the militarization of police and national borders, an explosion of white nationalism, frightening red-alert active-shooter drills and school lockdowns, increasingly frequent and deadly mass shootings, the accelerating and genuine threat of climate change, and a global pandemic,” writes “Fight” author John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics.

When asked to describe America, Gen Z uses terms like “dystopic,” “broken” and “a bloody mess.”

Getty Images/Westend61

And while other generations might have had their downsides, they also had moments of American triumph, Della Volpe claims. Boomers had Woodstock and the civil rights movement. Gen X witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall. Millennials came of age during the election of our first-ever black president, Barack Obama.

But Gen Z?

“Except for maybe Netflix, reruns of ‘The Office,’ Amanda Gorman, Halsey, Simone Biles, and Lil Nas X, Gen Z hasn’t caught much of a break,” Della Volpe writes.

One of the shortcomings of “Fight” is that Della Volpe seems to take the word of teenagers as an absolute truth.

The author of “Fight” claims that past generations have had moments of American triumph, such as the boomers with Woodstock — but Gen Z has nothing to be proud of.

Getty Images

It’s certainly fair to say that nobody is going to be nostalgic for 2020, a year defined by sickness and isolation. But Della Volpe claims that, as a result of the difficult times they grew up with, Gen Z is “united by terror.” When asked to describe America they use terms like “dystopic,” “broken” and “a bloody mess.” By contrast, millennials in the mid-2010s used words like “diverse,” “free” and “land of abundance” to describe the USA.

Only a decade later, when Della Volpe asked Zoomers about the moments that made them proud to be American, they were largely at a loss. “I get blank stares, or examples of random sporting events like the USA soccer team finally beating Ghana in a 2017 friendly match,” he writes.

One of the shortcomings of “Fight” is that the author takes the word of teenagers as absolute truth. Gen Z has actually witnessed multiple triumphs, such as NASA landing a probe on Mars.

NASA/UPI/Shutterstock

To this, I say — perhaps Gen Z isn’t paying attention? After all, in addition to reruns of “The Office” (which are terrific), they’ve seen America elect its first-ever female vice president, the Perseverance Rover land on Mars, and the US army develop a vaccine that is supposed to treat all strains of SARS and COVID.

America is in a different and more promising place than it was even two years ago.

Meanwhile, Gen Z’s addiction to social media has been well reported, with many researchers linking the problem to a decline in mental health. Nearly half of Zoomers suffer from depression requiring clinical treatment, according to Della Volpe. When the National Center for Health Statistics compared the suicide rate of people aged 10-24 from 2007-2009 with the period from 2016-2018, they found it had increased by 47 percent, he writes. That percentage has risen in every single state.

Zoomers are more politically active than past generations. Those with the highest anxiety are also most likely to vote.

AP

In spite of this pervasive sense of despair, Generation Z has become intensely politically involved, Della Volpe notes. He writes that Zoomers with the highest anxiety are also most likely to vote. A lot of them clearly have a great deal of anxiety — in 2018, twice the number of adults under 30 voted in the midterm election than had in 2015 (33 percent compared to 16 percent), according to the book.

Generation Z has become intensely politically involved.

The future they want is a progressive one where there is “automatic voter registration at 18… high speed rail…an expensive healthcare system… a federal job corps that blends universal basic income and essential-services work for millions of displaced and previously undervalued workers,” Della Volpe writes.

It’s a utopian picture. But some older generations might point out that it’s sometimes hard to build the perfect world you envision at 18.

And, even if Gen Z manages it, they’ll need to develop a better understanding of history first. Or else, how will they know whether they’ve made any progress?

Jennifer Wright is the author of “Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them” and “She Kills Me: The True Stories of History’s Deadliest Women.” Twitter: @JenAshleyWright

TURKEY'S WAR ON KURDISTAN

Turkey ends 'first phase' of military operation in N. Iraq, as Kurdish commentators warn of an 'occupation'

Dana Taib Menmy
Iraq
26 April, 2022

Turkish soldiers in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. [Getty]

Turkey on Monday said it had "successfully completed the first stage" of its cross-border military incursion, dubbed "Operation Claw-Lock", into northern Iraqi Kurdistan to fight against militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), as several Kurdish political observers warn Ankara's main strategy is to "occupy the region."

On April 18 Turkey launched "Operation Claw-Lock" against the PKK in the Metina, Zap and Avasin-Basyan areas of the Iraqi Kurdistan region.

"Our operation continues as planned with great success. We wish God's mercy upon our martyrs," Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar was quoted by Anadolu News Agency as saying.

"The first phase of the operation has been successfully completed," he added, before stressing that a new phase of the operation had already begun and will continue until the goal of defeating the PKK is achieved.

Turkey calls in Iraq envoy to defend new offensive

"Some 56 PKK terrorists were eliminated in the operation so far. Right now we have taken most of the area under control, however, there are many caves in this area…Our only goal is to eliminate terrorists. Once the area is cleared, Turkey's border will be fully locked against security threats," Akar said according to the Daily Sabah.

On its part, the People's Defense Forces (HPG), the military wing of the PKK, on Monday said in a statement said that "19 Turkish soldiers were killed, 2 more were injured, 6 helicopters were damaged, and one drone was shot down."

"The occupying Turkish army has once again resorted to vicious methods and used toxic chemical gases during the battle since it fails to advance against our forces, who are inflicting heavy blows on them. Despite all the dirty war methods employed by the occupying Turkish army, which has committed war crimes using chemical weapons," excerpts of the statement claim.

Turkey shells Kobane, US calls for 'de-escalation'

The PKK has been waging an insurgency for greater autonomous rights against the Turkish state since 1984, with tens of thousands estimated to have been killed so far. The PKK has been categorised as a "terrorist organisation" by Ankara and its Western allies.

"The Turkish state is just using the PKK as a pretext for its step by step strategy of occupying the Iraqi Kurdistan region and reviving the former Ottoman Empire," Kamaran Mantik, a Kurdish University political science professor, told The New Arab during a brief phone interview.

"Ankara has the green light of NATO, Russia, and Iran to occupy northern Iraq, which was known as Vilayet Mosul of the Ottoman Empire," he added.

Turkey Falsely Claims Iraq Agreed to Attack in Northern Iraq

April 22, 2022
Nisan Ahmado

Turkish troops in action against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq, June 17, 2020. (AP)



Recep Tayyip Erdogan
President of Turkey
“I wish success for our heroic soldiers involved in this operation, which we are carrying out in close cooperation with the central Iraqi government and the regional administration.”
Source: Al-Arabiya News, April 20, 2022

FALSE

On April 18, Turkey launched a military offensive aimed at purported Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) hideouts in northern Iraq, saying the group was planning a cross-border attack.

During an April 20 parliamentary meeting of his Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the country’s military had to act against terrorist organizations infiltrating Turkey. He claimed only terrorists opposed such operations.

“I wish success for our heroic soldiers involved in this operation, which we are carrying out in close cooperation with the central Iraqi government and the regional administration in northern Iraq,” Erdogan said.

That is false.



In fact, on April 19, Iraq’s Foreign Ministry denounced the Turkish operation in a statement on its website, saying it refused to let Iraq be a place for “conflicts and settling scores for other external parties.”

“Iraq regards this action as a violation of its sovereignty and the sanctity of the country, and an act that violates international charters and laws that govern the relations between countries,” the ministry said.

The same day, the Iraqi government summoned the Turkish ambassador in Baghdad, Ali Reza Guney, handing him what it described as “firmly-worded note of protest” to “put an end to acts of provocation and unacceptable violations.”



That does not sound like “close cooperation.”

On April 21, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry summoned Iraq’s charge d'affaires to convey “discomfort” over the Iraqi statements, Reuters reported.

Turkey has repeatedly conducted airstrikes in northern Iraq, mainly targeting areas in the Kurdish region where PKK fighters are concentrated. In 2020, Turkey launched two large-scale operations, code-named Claw-Tiger and Claw-Eagle.

About half the 25 million Kurds in the Mideast live in southeast Turkey. The PKK first emerged as a leftist separatist group in the late 1970s and launched a string of violent attacks. Since 2000, repeated efforts to settle differences with the government have failed.

Turkey, the European Union and the United States officially consider the PKK a terrorist group.

The Turkey-PKK conflict has lasted more than 40 years and killed nearly 40,000 people. A pro-Kurdish political party, the HDP, is also active in Turkey in opposition to Erdogan.

Following the attempted military coup in Turkey in 2016, Erdogan arrested thousands of people, increased airstrikes in southern Turkey and conducted military operations in Iraq and Syria.



Erdogan intensified actions against PKK militants in the wake of the failed coup. Meantime, his AKP and allies have moved to shut down the HDP, an effort the United States has denounced.

Turkey says that its latest military operation is in line with the United Nations principle of self-defense. In a news conference held on April 18, AKP spokesman Omer Celik said the operation is a preemptive move to “fend-off a large-scale attack by the PKK.”

“We have to protect our people, based on the right of self-protection enshrined in Article 51 of the UN Charter, "Celik said.

Celik cited Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which states:

“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

However, Iraq’s Foreign Ministry rejected Turkey’s claim, saying Article 51 does not permit the breach of an independent country’s sovereignty.

On April 20, the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) also denounced the Turkish operation, stating that the sovereignty of Kurdish and Iraqi territory must be respected. The Peshmerga is the military wing of the KRG and Iraqi Kurdistan.

Without directly criticizing Turkey, on April 19, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said activity in Iraq must respect the country’s sovereignty and regional security.

The KRG blamed the PKK for the Turkish operation. On April 19, KRG spokesman Jutiar Adel said in a press conference that the PKK’s presence is inflicting harm on the Kurdistan region of Iraq. While Adel did not say that the KRG is directly cooperating with Turkey, he called on Kurdish opponents of both Turkey and Iran to find peaceful means to settle issues.



Turkey has been accused of targeting civilians and destabilizing northern Iraq. In February, a Turkish airstrike hit a Kurdish refugee camp in Iraq, killing eight people and injuring 17, including both civilians and PKK fighters. Most of the camp’s 12,000 refugees are Kurds who fled Turkey because of fighting.

Turkish airstrikes in February targeted Iraq’s Makhmour province and Sinjar province – the latter a predominantly Yazidi area.

Turkey has also conducted airstrikes in Syria, targeting the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara considers an affiliate of the PKK. The YPG, however, is the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a U.S. ally that spearheaded the fight against the Islamic State (IS) terror group in Syria.



Turkish military operations pose a risk to displaced Yazidis who want to go back to their homes. In 2014, 400,000 Yazidis were killed, kidnapped or forced to flee by IS. The U.N. called it a genocide.

IS was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2018. Today, 350,000 Yazidi survivors live in scattered refugee camps in northern Iraq.

WAR IS RAPE
Sexual violence rife in South Sudan as 'terrified' residents stuck in war: UN

The United Nations mission in South Sudan has 'strongly condemned' the rise of sexual violence and murder in the conflict-struck country as inter-ethnic violence 

The New Arab Staff & Agencies
26 April, 2022

The violence has prompted fears of a return to conflict in the fragile young nation [Getty]

At least 72 civilians were killed over a seven-week period in a single county in South Sudan, with some beheaded and others burned alive, along with women experiencing sexual violence as interethnic violence roils the oil-rich region, the United Nations said on Monday.

The bloodshed between February 17 and April 7 in Leer county in Unity state reportedly forced 40,000 people to flee their homes, with UN investigators recording 64 cases of sexual violence, the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) said.

"UNMISS strongly condemns the widespread sexual violence, killings including beheadings, burning alive of civilians, and attacks on humanitarians," it said in a statement.

In total "72 civilians were killed, at least 11 injured," the statement added.

Two women told a UN team they were repeatedly raped and gang-raped by armed youths when they came out of hiding to look for food for their children.

Another woman who had recently given birth suffered a similar fate and was beaten for three days.

"I am strongly appalled by these horrific attacks on civilians in Leer," said Nicholas Haysom, who heads UNMISS.

"We must all do everything we can to ensure that victims and survivors get the justice they deserve and receive the care and support they need."

Terrified villagers told AFP earlier this month about spending days hiding in swamps as armed men set fire to their huts and raided their livestock.

Some described horrific abuses including the rape of women and girls.

The violence has prompted fears of a return to conflict in the fragile young nation, which plunged into a civil war in 2013, barely two years after achieving its independence from Sudan.

The fighting between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and his rival Vice President Riek Machar left nearly 400,000 dead before the two men agreed to lay down their guns in 2018.

RELATED
UN says nine million in need of aid in South Sudan

But the country of 11 million has struggled to maintain a tenuous peace in the intervening years, grappling with lawlessness and explosions of interethnic violence.

Political bickering between Kiir and Machar has not helped, with both sides exchanging fire in recent months.

Although Kiir and Machar announced an end to the latest hostilities earlier this month and vowed to save the teetering peace pact, Unity state was wracked by fresh violence less than a week later.

Almost nine million people -- with children accounting for more than half -- will need aid to survive this year, the UN said this month.

"The Mission urges national and local authorities to take immediate measures to reduce tensions and prevent further escalations and retaliatory attacks," said Haysom, calling on perpetrators to be held accountable.

UNMISS was originally deployed for a year when the world's newest nation gained independence, but its mandate has been extended again and again as the country lurches from crisis to crisis.