Special envoy Joli can help draw attention to “some of the world’s most difficult refugee situations”
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie at the annual meeting of the refugee agency's governing body.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Actress Angelina Jolie was asked Tuesday 4 October by the head of the UN refugee organization UNHCR to take on a new role as special envoy, in the wake of several new emergency refugee situations this year.
The invitation was extended by High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, who recognized her 10 years of service with the agency by asking her to take on an expanded role in some of the world’s most difficult refugee situations.
His request came just as news reports began to flow in of a bomb blast in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. Seventy people were reportedly killed and 150 injured, according to Somalia’s President Sharif Sheikh Ahmedhe.
Al-Shabab, which is fighting the government, took responsibility for the suicide bomb. The news is the latest evidence of the rising level of violence in the country, from which people are fleeing in growing numbers.
The Dabaad camps in Kenya, across the border from Somalia, now have nearly half a million people, with 1,000 arriving daily. Some 200,000 Somalis have fled to these camps in the past four months.
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie at the annual meeting of the refugee agency's governing body.
Jolie is in Geneva for the annual meeting of UNHCR’s executive committee, which oversees funding for the organization and its projects.
She has become one of the best-known goodwill ambassadors for a UN agency, through her regular and frequent visits, on average four a year, to refugee camps around the world, including some in very remote regions. She took on the ambassadorial role in August 2001.
“Today, three-quarters of a million people are at risk of death in the next four months in the Horn of Africa,” she told the executive committee. “The work we are doing needs to scale up to meet the needs of these individuals. How we continue to respond to this period of malnutrition and famine is going to define the work of those NGOs, governments, and international organizations working in the Horn of Africa. It will, quite starkly, determine whether a huge number of people live or die.”
Monday Jolie shared the spotlight with Nasser Salim Ali Al-Hamairy, founder of Yemen’s Society for Humanitarian Solidarity: she co-presented with Guterres the 2011 Nansen Refugee Award, given to the SHS. The prize, widely considered the refugee world’s highest honour, was awarded to the founder and the 290 staff of SHS, a non-governmental organization, for their life-saving work in helping thousands of refugees and migrants who arrive on Yemen’s shores each year.
The staff comb the Yemeni coastline year round, pulling people from the sea and helping them find safety and assistance.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A huge blast at a Cyprus munitions dump at a naval base on the south of the island at 06:00 (local time) Monday 11 July killed at least 8 people. Some reports say 12 people have died and at least 38 were injured. It is being treated for now as an accident, reports the BBC, whose service to the Middle East was knocked out by major electricity cuts linked to the blast.
The explosion reportedly occurred after two containers of stored arms caught fire. The fire then spread to a nearby power plant, the country’s largest. Reuters reports that doors and windows were blown out at a resort 3km away.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A large manhunt by police from Lausanne and Yverdon, joined by border guards, is on for a group of four robbers who blew apart an outside bancomat in Corcelles-près-Payerne at 05:00 Thursday morning 23 June. A neighbour phoned 117 to alert the emergency centre after hearing a loud blast, but the thieves had taken the money in the machine and fled by the time police arrived.
The bills were immediately sprayed with red ink when the blast occurred, but the thieves left with an undisclosed number of bank notes despite the fact they are permanently marked.
The four were young, wearing dark clothes, and they took care to mask their faces. They left in a car that was earlier stolen in Geneva. The car was found near Ropraz, where it had been burned.
Anyone with information is asked to phone the police in Vaud at +41 21 644 4444.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss Foreign Affairs Department Sunday confirmed to Swiss media that two men missing after an explosion at a cafe in Marrakesh, Morocco last Thursday were killed by the blast. Moroccan authorities were unable to identify the bodies until Sunday.
The two, ages 23 and 25, had been sitting at the cafe with two women friends, ages 25 and 27, who were brought back to Switzerland by Rega Saturday and immediately hospitalized. Both are in critical condition.
The four were all from canton Ticino, although the 23-year-old man was Portuguese and the other man was Swiss, as are the two women.
They were in Marrakesh as tourists.
The explosion, which is still under investigation, killed 16 people, 13 of whom were tourists. In addition to the two Swiss, the Moroccan interior ministry announced that the group includes eight French citizens, three Moroccans, a Canadian, a British citizen and a Dutch person.
Another two dozen people were injured.
Hundreds of Moroccans turned out for a peaceful protest in Marrakesh Sunday, with some demanding a more rapid transition to democracy, according to several media sources with reporters on the scene. Other Moroccans are concerned about the loss of tourism, an important source of income.
La Chataigneraie - Int'l School of Geneva in Founex
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A group of students who are in their next to final year at La Châtaigneraie in Founex are safe, according to the International School of Geneva, after arriving in Marrakesh Thursday morning 28 April and finding themselves only a few hundred metres from the blast that shook the Arguna Cafe and killed at least 14 people.
La Châtaigneraie is one of four campuses of the International School of Geneva. The students are on an International Baccalaureate programme geography field trip and in a letter being sent to parents today the school says that “all of our students are safe and well and though they were aware of the explosion [they] were at no time in any danger. The group are now in the hotel and will stay there whilst the details and cause of the explosion are determined.”
School officials say they are “keeping an open mind about the continuation of the trip. As and when further information becomes available we will review it, make a final decision.”
The cause of the blast is not yet clear, although Morocco’s Interior Ministry said early Friday on state television that it was a terrorist act.
The official death toll is 14, but local TV reports in Morocco say 15 people died, including six French citizens, five Moroccans, a Russian and a British citizen, but the government has not officially confirmed the nationalities. France has confirmed the deaths of its citizens.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Unconfirmed reports by hospitals to media groups indicate that six French tourists may be among the dead after an apparent bomb blast at a popular cafe in Marrakesh, Morocco Thursday noon 28 April, and that two Swiss may be among the 20 or more persons injured.
TSR television says the Swiss government could not confirm the news Thursday evening.
The death toll has now risen to 15. Earlier story, GenevaLunch
Blast comes as US president meets with Pentagon over pullout
Thirty-six recruits for the army in Afghanistan were killed and 42 injured when a bomb exploded in a suicide attack on an Afghan army recruitment center in the northern province of Kunduz province, government officials said Tuesday 15 March. The attack comes a day after US President Barack Obama met with his defense secretary, Robert Gates, and General David Petraeus to review the situation in Afghanistan.
The meeting, the White House said in a press briefing, included “the effectiveness of the military surge, the growth of the Afghan National Security Forces, and President Karzai’s expected March 21 announcement on beginning transition to Afghan security lead. They also discussed the plan to begin the reduction of U.S. forces this July, and the path to completing the transition to full Afghan responsibility for security by the end of 2014.”
Links to other sites: CNN, White House
A bomb that went off as Christian church-goers left a New Year’s service Saturday 31 December in Alexandria, Egypt, killed 17 people and possibly more, while injuring dozens, Egyptian interior ministry officials say. Initial reports said that a car bomb was responsible for the blast, and the number of dead listed was higher, but conflicting reports are now citing foreign ministry officials, with one version saying that the explosion was probably the work of a suicide bomber who died along with his victims. Egypt has a majority of Muslims but 10 percent of the population is Christian, according to Reuters. The blast was followed by thousands of Christians taking to the streets in protest.
Links to other sites: Al Jazeera, Jerusalem Post, Reuters
Toll could go much higher
Explosions in a Siberian mine in Russia late Saturday and early Sunday have taken the lives of at least 43 people, according to Russian authorities, but another 47 are still missing. Hopes are “dimming” for their survival, says national news agency Ria Novosti. Nineteen of the dead were rescue workers who arrived on the scene after the first blast, but were caught by the second. More than 70 people were injured by the blasts near the town of Mezhdurechensk in the Kemerovo Region
Links to other sites: Ria Novosti, Xinhua
Four foreigners are reportedly among seven people killed when a bomb exploded near a school in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, but initial reports are contradictory. The bomb may have hit a convoy, in the Lower Dir district, traveling to the opening of a girls school but other reports say the blast came during the opening ceremony of the school. Two of the dead may have been schoolgirls, but it seems clear that many of the nearly 50 injured were students. The BBC reports that the four Westerners killed were aid workers, citing police, but other sources say there were three Westerners and they may have been US soldiers. The district is a Taliban stronghold.
An award-winning journalist from Calgary and four soldiers died in a blast in Afghanistan, in Canada’s third worst day in Afghanistan. Five others, including one Canadian civilian, were injured by the explosion on the edges of the city of Kandahar. “The attack came during a community security patrol to gather information on the pattern of life and maintain security in the area,” reports the CBC. Journalist Michelle Lang had been in Afghanistan only two weeks and was gathering material for a series of articles on the work of Canadian soldiers.
Links to other sites: CBC, Vancouver Sun
A blast in the capital of Somalia, Mogadishu, killed three cabinet ministers and at least 18 other people Thursday 3 December, although AllAfrica, picking up the story from a UN humanitarian newsletter which cites a hospital source, puts the figure at 50 dead. The authors of the crime remain a mystery. A bomb exploded during a medical school graduation ceremony and suspicion quickly fell on an Islamist group, al Shabaab, but the group has denied it was involved. The extremist group has been locked in a power struggle with the Western-backed government, which the extremists accused of masterminding the blast, pointing out that the government itself has deep rifts. The US has called al Shabaab a proxy for al Qaeda in the region and Reuters reports that “Western security agencies say Somalia has become a safe haven for militants, including foreign jihadists, who are using it to plot attacks across the impoverished region and beyond.”
Update 18:10 Syrian Interior Minister Said Mohammad Sammour has said on Syrian state television that there was no bomb and that the explosion was due to overinflated tires on the bus, Al-Jazeera reports. He categorically denied that the incident was terrorist-related.
A bomb has gone off in the centre of Damascus, Syria, Thursday morning 3 December, killing several people. The number of dead has not yet been confirmed by Syrian authorities, but the country’s interior minister, Said Mohammad Sammour, told a Lebanese TV station that it appears to have targeted Iranian pilgrims. Initial media reports indicate that 12 people may have died.
A mine blast early Saturday 21 November in China’s northern Heilongjiang province is now known to have killed 104 miners, with another four still trapped in the coal mine where more than 500 people were working when gas levels suddenly rose. Worries over mine safety have been increasing in China, with several accidents in recent months, and authorities in Beijing have said they are improving conditions. But this latest accident, in a state-owned mine, is prompting even state media to raise the issue of safety.
Updated 15:45 Ed. note: the number of deaths is rising and is now reported to be 23. A “powerful bomb” exploded in the centre of Lahore, Pakistan’s business centre Wednesday 27 May, killing 15 people and shearing the fronts off of several buildings in the area. The blast appears to have been set off by a suicide bomber but CNN reports that it was a well-coordinated attack with gunmen involved as well. The target was a police station with some 200 people inside and the building was demolished. Lahore was the target of bombs in March 2009, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility. BBC, CNN
