MIDDLE EAST: Weekly round-up Number 40 for 17-22 September 2005

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

Key Humanitarian Developments in Iraq

A mass grave holding the remains of more than 100 Kurdish women, children and old men was uncovered in al-Badiya neighborhood, west of al-Samawe, south of Baghdad, the daily Al-Ittihad, which is published by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, reported on Monday. A local resident discovered the grave and reported it to authorities, it added.

In the southern city of Basra tensions were running high after an attack by British forces on a police station to free two of their soldiers who had been arrested by Iraqi police and militiamen. On Wednesday, hundreds of Iraqi civilians and policemen, some waving pistols and AK-47s, rallied to denounce "British aggression", with some demanding an apology. Britain defended the raid, saying the lives of the two men were at risk. Defense Secretary John Reid and Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari met and said the incident would not undermine the relationship between the two nations.

In another development, officials in Iraq's Northern Oil Company said a bomb exploded late on Wednesday beneath a pipeline which connects the Bay Hassan oil fields with Kirkuk in the north. Insurgents frequently target the oil pipelines as part of their campaign against the Iraqi government and the US-led coalition.

Meanwhile, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported that two Iraqi journalists were kidnapped and murdered in separate attacks within two days.

Fakher Haider of the New York Times was seized on Sunday night from his home in the al-Asmaey neighborhood of the southern city of Basra by several men claiming to be police officers. His body was found on Monday in the southwestern neighborhood of al-Kiblah with at least one gunshot to the head, according to his family.

Earlier on Friday, Hind Ismail, a 28-year-old reporter for the local daily al-Safir, was kidnapped in the northern city of Mosul, local journalists told CPJ. Police in the southern suburb of al-Muthana found her body the next morning with a single bullet wound to the head.

The deaths take the number of journalists killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in March 2003 to 55, according to the CPJ.

In New York, the United Nations top envoy to Iraq said it was important that Iraqis, in the long run, took ownership of the political process and the maintained security in their country.

"While the referendum and the elections are necessary instruments in Iraq's transition to democracy, they are only staging posts along an evolving transition," Ashraf Qazi, Special Representative of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said as he introduced Annan's latest report on Iraq.

The report said the process of drafting the new constitution, which was handed over to the UN for printing and distribution, was transparent and inclusive. The UN hopes to distribute some 5 million copies of the document ahead of a national referendum on 15 October. Qazi urged member states to provide the US $107 million needed to pay for the referendum and the elections that will follow.

Meanwhile the UN World Food Programme (WFP) warned that a funding shortfall of 56 per cent was jeopardising an emergency operation to feed more than 3 million people, over half of them children.

"The hungry in Iraq should be at the top of donors' lists; instead they seem to be at the bottom. It's hard to understand," the WFP country director in Iraq, Calum Gardner, said in a statement on Tuesday. The agency's US $66 million operation that runs until the end of 2005, had only US $29 million so far.

"We provide food to those who cannot support themselves – children, women and the chronically sick. If we don't get more funding soon, we will no longer be able to assist them," he added.

Under this project, WFP aims to provide 67,000 tonnes of food to over 1.7 million extremely impoverished primary schoolchildren, 220,000 malnourished children and their family members (totalling over 1.1 million), 350,000 pregnant and lactating women and more than 6,000 tuberculosis patients.

CONTENTS:

IRAQ: Test census to be conducted
IRAQ: UN urges Iraqis to vote in upcoming referendum
IRAQ: National assembly could broaden death penalty
IRAQ: Power supply improves in the capital
IRAQ: Displaced families return to devastated Talafar
EGYPT: Opposition calls for anti-ruling party coalition in November polls
SYRIA: Training refugees to gain useful skills
SYRIA: Many Syrians living in poverty
SYRIA: Environmental NGOs receive UNDP grants
SYRIA: Women struggle to cope with scarcity of jobs
YEMEN: Religious leaders discuss anti-AIDS strategies
YEMEN: Demand for law to control firearms as crime soars
LEBANON: Peace concert held to mark international day
LEBANON: Gov't urged to combat trafficking in human beings

[ENDS]