التصنيف: أخبار

The Houthi attack on an oil tanker off the coast of Yemen is a significant escalation suggesting the British-American strategy to deter and degrade the Houthi threat is failing.

Who owns ships is a murky business. The debate about British links with the Marlin Luanda is a bit of a red herring.

The point is the Houthis say they attacked it because they believe it is British-owned.

Follow latest: US destroys Houthi anti-ship missile in Yemen

That’s important because this week Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he had authorised another round of airstrikes to send a message to the Houthis: Stop attacking international shipping in the Red Sea.

It was always going to be a gamble. Either that show of force would make the Houthis think twice about what they have to lose from British American attacks destroying their missiles, radar and other assets.

Or it would stir up the Houthi hornet’s nest further and infuriate them, provoking them to do double down and do their worst.

The evidence from last night’s attack points to the latter outcome. The Houthi attacks ups the ante in a number of ways. They are saying ‘we see your airstrikes and we raise our stakes’.

And it’s an escalation in the way they’ve responded too. The oil tanker they’ve attacked was not even in the Red Sea. Its cargo is also important. The international economy is most sensitive to attacks on fuel.

The prime minister and his foreign office officials insist what is happening in the Red Sea has nothing to do with what is happening in Gaza. That is incorrect.

The Houthis full scale attacks on international shipping began a month after Israel’s offensive there and they say they are acting in solidarity with their Arab brothers and sisters there.

You can question the sincerity of that solidarity. Sceptics would say this is more about winning support on the Arab street. It is certainly achieving its aim.

But the fact remains that the Houthis began this because of the war in Gaza and will most likely end it when it comes to an end.

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As Marco Forgione, the director general of the Export and International Institute told another broadcaster today, one way of ending the attacks on shipping in the Red sea is Israel ending its offensive in Gaza.

Britain and America for now though stand by their support of Israel’s campaign despite the deaths of more than 25000 Palestinians.

The British and American attempts to disconnect their military action against the Houthis from Israel and Gaza is understandable but misleading.

But more worrying for Downing St, the White House and their military planners, their action appears to be backfiring. To make the Red Sea safe again the allies would have to entirely eradicate the Houthi menace to shipping.

That is impossible as long as the Houthis retain a capability of missiles and drones however small out in the desert wastes of Yemen.

The allied attacks on the Houthis have made them heroes in Yemen and far beyond. In that sense, instead of being weakening, they have been strengthened by the air strikes.

The Houthis are throttling the jugular of international commerce and lured the British and Americans into striking them in attacks that may only be making matters worse.

Ukraine would win the war faster if it had permission to fire British and other Western weapons against targets deep inside Russia, the head of the Ukrainian navy has signalled.

Vice Admiral Oleksiy Neizhpapa told Sky News the course of the entire conflict would have been very different had Ukrainian forces been allowed to use western munitions without restrictions from the very beginning.

The UK, US and other allies only agreed to start giving Ukraine longer-range missiles last year. Ukrainian forces have used them to hit targets in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine but not deep inside Russia amid concerns about escalation.

Follow latest updates: US to station nuclear weapons in Britain ‘imminently’, report claims

In a wide-ranging interview, the Ukrainian commander also said his navy would gladly take charge of two British warships the Royal Navy may reportedly have to retire early because of a shortage of sailors amid a recruitment crisis.

“We must have the capabilities to make sure that Russia will give up forever the thought of even looking in Ukraine’s direction, including at sea,” Vice Admiral Neizhpapa said.

Despite limited naval assets, the Ukrainian armed forces – supported by the UK and other allies – have been conducting a David versus Goliath-style operation against Russia’s much larger Black Sea Fleet in and around occupied Crimea, destroying ships, infrastructure and even taking out a submarine.

A one-fingered salute to Russian flagship

Souvenirs of the sea war decorate a room at a secret location in Odesa, southern Ukraine, where the admiral gave his interview earlier this month.

Displayed in one corner is the lid of a tube of a Ukrainian missile used to sink the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in the first weeks of the full-scale invasion.

The attack on the Moskva on 14 April 2022 remains one of Ukraine’s most iconic triumphs.

Painted on one side of the lid is an image of the Russian ship in flames with a Ukrainian commando standing in the foreground giving it a one-fingered salute.

The sinking of the Moskva “achieved a military goal, but also a political one”, said Vice Admiral Neizhpapa, proudly holding the unusual piece of artwork, which is about the size of a very large plate.

“At that moment, Ukraine understood that Moscow can be defeated.”

Another piece of history is mounted on a wall in a wooden frame, encased by glass.

It contains the arming pin for a British Storm Shadow missile fired from a Ukrainian Su-24 bomber aircraft against Russia’s naval headquarters in the port city of Sevastopol in Crimea on 22 September 2023 – another landmark strike.

‘More than two dozen Russian vessels destroyed’

Very little is known in public about the secret operations conducted by Ukraine’s military, with support from western allies, against the Russian navy, but they involve a range of different modes of attack, including underwater drones, western missiles and even jet skis.

“Our successes during 2022 and 2023 were a result of difficult but innovative decisions, which did not exist before,” the naval commander said.

Ukraine is believed to have destroyed more than two dozen Russian vessels, forcing Moscow to pull back a number of warships from Crimea to the Russian port of Novorossiysk.

The action has made it harder for Russia to enforce a naval blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, imposed to reduce Kyiv’s ability to export grain.

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Previous attack methods may no longer work, admiral warns

The admiral said the sea war has two goals – to stop the Russian navy from being able to attack Ukraine and to enable ships to access Ukrainian ports.

But with the full-scale invasion about the enter its third year, he warned previous methods of attack may no longer work.

“The enemy is adapting, and we must also adapt. A modern war is a war of technologies. Whoever wins in the technological sense will have victory,” he said.

‘Putin behaves like a small-scale gangster’

Something that could help Ukraine would be the ability to use long-range western weapons, such as Britain’s Storm Shadow missile or American ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems), against military targets inside Russia.

Asked whether he believed Ukraine could win the war faster if given such permission, the commander said: “Of course, the sooner the armed forces have the necessary battle capabilities and certain capabilities to destroy the enemy’s infrastructure facilities, the sooner we will win.”

He added: “As a military man, I will say the following: the enemy, knowing the battle capabilities of [our] armed forces, reacts accordingly to our actions. Therefore, of course, if we had limitless capabilities, believe me, the war would have played out totally differently.

“If Ukraine had certain types of long-range weapons which can be used deeper at the enemy territory, of course, the enemy would have behaved differently, including on the battlefield.

“Putin behaves like a small-scale gangster who knows that if he is matched blow for blow, he will not start a fight… If he understands that Ukraine can fight back and make him really feel pain, of course, he will give all this up. This is all.”

‘The navy needs warships’

Western allies have – according to public comments made by military and political leaders – restricted the use of their weapons to within Ukraine and Russian-held Ukrainian territory because of concern about igniting a direct war between Moscow and the West, even though Russian forces launch strikes against Ukrainian troops from locations across Russia.

As well as giving missiles, British Defence Secretary Grant Shapps revealed in December that two Royal Navy minehunter ships would be transferred to the Ukrainian navy, though the ships will not be able to enter Ukrainian ports until the war ends because of restricted access to the Black Sea.

Britain is also reportedly considering retiring two Type 23 frigates because of a shortage of sailors.

Asked whether his navy would be interested in HMS Westminster and HMS Argyll if that did happen, Vice Admiral Neizhpapa said: “Of course, the Navy needs warships, because we understand that there is no navy without ships. This is why, if such a decision is taken, concerning the possibility of handing over two frigates to the [Ukrainian] Navy, we will be very happy.”

There was only one passenger strapped in the back of the bush plane. She said little during the flight and wore a look that revealed nothing about her ordeal. 

The pilot said he could only remember one thing about the 20-year-old, called Victoria Mishoni.

Hidden beneath her shawl was a tightly wrapped bundle. She held on to it tightly – yet tenderly – and he noticed that it never left her arms.

The bundle contained Victoria’s newborn baby, named Rose Jackson. But the child, who was born with a condition called gastroschisis, was dead.

Ms Mishoni, from Manyara in central Tanzania, said she could not believe what had happened: “I never thought I would go home with a dead body.”

Warning: This article contains images and details of children in hospital with the gastroschisis condition – some people may find this distressing

Her troubles began a month earlier when she first laid eyes on her baby. The 20-year-old said she was astonished by what she saw.

“I knew my baby was not well, but I was really shocked to see how her stomach was out in the open air. I had never heard of such a sickness… why did this happen to my baby?”

Gastroschisis is a birth defect in which the abdominal organs – usually the large and small intestines – have formed on the outside of the body.

In other words, the baby’s guts end up on the wrong side, although they are still connected to the body via a hole in the tummy.

Without immediate treatment, the organs will shrivel, and the baby will die.

‘Mortality rate is 100%’

In countries like the UK and the US, children with gastroschisis are highly likely to survive.

The defect is usually picked up in pre-natal scans and babies are rushed to surgery after childbirth. Long-term survival rates exceed 90%.

In much of Africa, doctors consider it to be untreatable. According to paediatric surgeon Dr Anne Wesonga, “the mortality rate is 100% – it is literally 100%”.

The author of two landmark medical studies on gastroschisis, Dr Wesonga is the foremost advocate for children with the condition in Africa – although it is a lonely and frequently exasperating role.

“The medical attitude here is so bad, the basic attitude is that the babies will die,” Dr Wesonga explained.

Gastroschisis is considered relatively rare with one in every 2,000 to 4,000 births affected worldwide.

Yet doctors in East Africa are reporting a significant increase in the number of babies suffering from the condition.

Dr Wesonga, who works at the sprawling Mulago National Referral Hospital in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, says the paediatric department used to admit a baby with gastroschisis every one or two weeks.

Now her unit receives one child suffering from this condition every single day.

“I don’t know why this is, I am unable to explain it,” she said.

“Maybe the mums are more willing to seek treatment now. But this is something that needs to be studied, we need to understand what’s going on.”

‘Suddenly there were three’

Across the border, in Tanzania, Victoria Mishioni and her baby daughter were admitted to a rural hospital in a town called Haydom.

Upon their arrival, she discovered that two other mothers, with babies suffering from gastroschisis, had just been admitted.

For the staff at Haydom Lutheran Hospital, this was a serious problem.

Dr Dorcas Mduma admitted they “lack the equipment and expertise” to deal with gastroschisis, adding they are now experiencing a marked increase in the number of babies with the condition.

“Maybe it is because these women are poor and lack proper nutrition? Maybe this is why we are seeing so many of these cases,” said Dr Mduma.

Medevac pilot Peter Griffin, for one, has never dealt with a situation like the one he found in central Tanzania.

When the aviator, who works for the charity Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), was directed to Haydom Hospital, he was told that he would be performing an emergency “evac” to a larger hospital in northern Tanzania.

Yet no one at MAF had performed a medical evacuation with three babies in the same plane.

He said: “It was a surprise. They told me there were two children with this condition at Haydom Hospital and then suddenly there were three mothers, three children with gastroschisis and a nurse as well. It took me some time to recalculate things.”

Mr Griffin managed to deliver them safely to Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC), in northern Tanzania.

Victoria told Sky News that she felt a great sense of relief because she did not have access to “great doctors” at home.

Short-lived hope as babies die

Such optimism soon evaporated when the baby of one of the other mothers from Haydom died five days after their arrival.

Worse still, the child belonging to the second mother died seven days into their stay at KCMC.

Suddenly, Victoria was left on her own – although she still held out hope.

Her baby daughter seemed to be gaining some strength and the doctors scheduled an operation to reinsert her intestines on 1 December.

One day before the surgery, however, the child picked up a temperature and in a matter of hours Rose Jackson was dead.

Victoria said the doctors were unable to explain to her why her daughter had passed away.

“I believe it was God’s will and so I accept it. I am not angry or bitter with God – or the doctors and nurses,” she said.

Unsurprisingly, gastroschisis expert Dr Wesonga sees the situation differently.

“The three babies didn’t need to die. These babies didn’t need much, they didn’t need thousands of dollars of treatment and that is why it hurts so much,” she said.

The 38-year-old surgeon first took an interest in the affliction while doing her medical training at Kampala’s Mulago Hospital.

Babies with gastroschisis spent a couple of days in the neonatal unit. Then, they died.

The doctor recalls: “I saw all these very healthy babies brought in, their eyes wide open, kicking their feet. They were perfectly healthy babies.”

“Three days later, they were so weak they couldn’t cry. The intestines turned black and they are totally dehydrated. It was over.”

Why were the babies dying?

Despite the demands of her training, Dr Wesonga did something revolutionary. She started to ask “why?”

She set up an academic study which focused on 42 babies admitted to Mulago Hospital with gastroschisis over the course of 12 months.

She recorded their symptoms, witnessed their treatment and formed relationships with their parents.

Of the 42 babies admitted to the hospital, 41 died. The one survivor had “peculiar features”, she said, with small intestines that medics were able to push back in.

Read more from Sky News:
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Dr Wesonga said the experience was so upsetting that she almost quit the profession.

“I took a personal interest in the children, but it turned into a traumatic moment in my life,” she said.

“I mean, it was so traumatic that I questioned whether I was doing the right job.”

She would return to the brutal realities of gastroschisis on a posting to an “up-country” hospital in the city of Mbarara in 2018.

It was time, she said, “to put the things I had learnt to good use”.

Solutions improvised to stop babies being ‘left to die’

Dr Wesonga knew that medical staff in East Africa rarely took measures to seal and protect protruding organs from the elements.

In developed countries, doctors stick the intestines into sacks called silo bags to prevent infection and fluid loss.

But silo bags are expensive at $200 (£157) each and hospital administrators in Uganda refuse to pay for them.

“If you think about it, $200 would pay for antimalaria medication for 500 babies – so you see the problem,” Dr Wesonga explained.

The surgeon started to improvise with cut-price alternatives like surgical gloves and urine bags.

She said: “We found that we could use surgical gloves by pushing the guts into them and suturing (stitching) the glove on to the mother’s tummy. Same thing with urine bags. The advantage is they’re rarely out of stock.”

Second, she had to find a way to keep the babies hydrated and warm. But in an overstretched hospital, this is a deceptively difficult problem to solve.

Babies with gastroschisis require a near-continuous supply of fluids but they are unlikely to receive these fluids on a ward where 40 babies are cared for by a solitary nurse.

Such children, “are just abandoned,” says the surgeon.

“They are left to die.”

In Mbarara’s up-country hospital, Dr Wesonga set to work changing the narrative, winning the support of her departmental head and the nurses on the ward, who agreed to alter their shift patterns.

The results of her experiment, which took around 11 months, were profoundly shocking.

“We ended up saving 50% of the babies who came in. We were astounded. We saved so many just by using the government resources that we had to hand,” she said.

Dr Wesonga proved that she could dramatically improve mortality rates at a minimal cost.

Death and debt

In neighbouring Tanzania, however, 20-year-old Victoria Mishoni told us a more familiar tale.

She said her daughter’s intestines were not wrapped and sealed by medical staff at KCMC, adding that responsibility for feeding and hydrating the child was given to her alone.

Nurses light-heartedly referred to her baby as “naughty”.

Victoria said: “When my daughter was hungry she would cry very loudly and the nurses would come and tell me, ‘your naughty baby is crying, go and feed her’.”

After Victoria’s daughter died, KCMC handed her an invoice of 871,400 Tanzanian shillings – around $320 (£250) – for treatment received.

She told Sky News she was not permitted to leave the hospital – or collect the body of her daughter – until the bill was paid.

Unable to pay or borrow the sum, Ms Mishoni said she spent an additional 11 days stuck inside the hospital.

Eventually, MAF raised the money through its donors and arranged Victoria’s flight home to central Tanzania.

The 20-year-old said she was deeply grateful.

“I couldn’t leave without my baby there. How could I go and leave the body behind?”

When Sky News contacted KCMC, spokesperson Robert Mtawa denied that Ms Mishoni was prohibited from leaving the facility.

“Our culture is to treat patients first and make arrangements for payment later,” he said.

“We have social welfare officers who deal with patients who are unable to pay their bills. Those who cannot pay receive exemptions,” he said.

Mr Mtawa said that doctors at the hospital were too busy to answer our questions about Ms Mishoni’s care.

He pointed out that more than 1,000 patients seek treatment at KCMC every day.

Babies still dying as hospitals resist change

In Uganda, Dr Wesonga returned to Mulago National Referral Hospital, introducing a 20-point protocol that she devised at the up-country health centre.

Mulago, which is the largest public health centre in the country, made some initial headway but these improvements have been lost.

It is a problem, she says, of training, resources and staff who are “not so keen” to change the way they work.

“We’re doing very badly. The survival rate is poor, 90% of the babies with gastroschisis are dying I’m afraid,” she said quietly.

The consequences are clear. Instead of nursing babies with a treatable condition back to health, medical staff in East Africa are far more likely to perform what they refer to as the “last office”.

The baby is taken from its cot and the tubes and dressings are removed.

The nurse cleans the child, wraps it tightly and passes the body to the mother. The mother cries in such a way that her pain and her sorrow are felt by everyone on the ward.

Dr Wesonga says it breaks her heart every time she hears it.

بيروت – وكالات:

اشتعلت المواجهات في الساعات الماضية على الجبهة الجنوبية، حيث ارتفعت حدة المواجهات بين حزب الله وإسرائيل.

ففيما استهدف حزب الله أحد المواقع الإسرائيلية في الجليل الأعلى مقابل الحدود مع لبنان تعرضت منطقة وادي حامول في القطاع الغربي وأطراف بلدة حولا جنوبي لبنان لقصف مدفعي إسرائيلي.

فيما شنت إسرائيل سلسلة غارات، ونفذت قصفا مدفعيا على عدد من البلدات في القطاعين الشرقي والغربي على الحدود، ومنها غارة على بلدة بيت ليف استهدفت منزلاً، ما أدى إلى مقتل 4 عناصر من حزب الله وجرح آخرين.كما استهدفت غارة اسرائيلية منزلاً في بلدة دير عامص جنوبي لبنان وأخرى بين بلدتي مارون الراس وعيترون من دون تسجيل إصابات.وتعرضت أكثر من 25 بلدة حدودية جنوبية لقصف مدفعي إسرائيلي. تركز معظمها في القطاع الشرقي.