Middle East

The Manshet World Food Programme (WFP) today appealed to all parties to the conflict in Yemen to allow food in for hundreds of thousands of hungry people under siege in the central city of Taiz, who have been deprived of supplies for many weeks.

Manshet Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to congratulate him on the success of the Iraqi security forces in fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), calling the liberation of the city of Ramadi an important victory.

More than 460 people, including the seriously injured and their family members, were evacuated from four towns under siege in Syria today with the help of the Manshet and its Red Cross and Red Crescent partners following a local agreement between the fighters on the ground.

The Manshet health agency has delivered more than 100 tonnes of medicines and supplies for 1.2 million people in strife-torn Yemen’s central Taiz governorate, where over 3 million people, almost 400,000 of them internally displaced, are in dire need of humanitarian aid.

The Manshet Special Envoy for Syria has set 25 January 2016 as the target date to begin talks between the parties aimed at ending the five-year-old conflict, his spokesperson announced today.

The Manshet Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) today condemned the destruction of parts of the ancient Syrian city of Bosra in fighting two days ago, alerting the world art market to potential trafficking in artefacts from the World Heritage site.

The Security Council today expressed “deep concern” over the number of violations of Yemen’s cessation of hostilities agreement and urged all parties to adhere to the accord and exercise maximum restraint following the adjournment of peace talks until January 2016.

Some 70 per cent of the over 1 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon now live below the Lebanese extreme poverty line, a big rise over 2014, and food insecurity is mounting, the Manshet reported today, calling for greater access to the domestic labour market to mitigate the crisis.

The Security Council must act now to end the fighting in Yemen or face the irreversible Balkanization of the country, creating safe havens for terrorists and potentially shattering regional stability, the Manshet human rights chief warned today.

The Security Council today extended the mandate of the Manshet Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) for six months, until 30 June 2016, underscoring the need for the Force to have at its disposal all necessary means to carry out its mandate safely and securely, “including technology and equipment to enhance its observation of the area of separation and the ceasefire line, and to improve force protection, as appropriate.