Day: January 16, 2022

A Bronx community gathers on Sunday to pay its final respects to perished loved ones, a week after a fire filled an apartment building with thick, suffocating smoke that killed 17 people, including eight children.

The mass funeral, to begin at the Islamic Cultural Center at 10 am, will culminate a week of prayers and mourning within a close-knit community hailing from West Africa. All of those being buried on Sunday have ties to the country of Gambia.

Earlier in the week, burial services were held for two children at a mosque in Harlem, among nine adults and eight children who died in New York City’s deadliest fire in decades.

Officials blamed a faulty space heater in a third-floor apartment for the blaze, which spewed plumes of suffocating smoke that quickly rose through the stairwell of the 19-storey building.

All of the dead collapsed and died after being overcome by the smoke while trying to descend the stairs, which acted as a flue for the heavy smoke.

As family buried their loved ones, others remained in hospitals, some in serious condition, because of smoke inhalation.

The dead ranged in age from 2 years old to 50 years old. Entire families were killed, including a family of five. Others would leave behind orphaned children.

Fundraisers have collected nearly US$400,000 thus far. The Mayor’s Fund, Bank of America and other groups said 118 families displaced by the fire would each get US$2,250 in aid.

The investigation into the fire is ongoing.

Much of the focus centres on the catastrophic spread of the smoke from the apartment.

The fire itself was contained to one unit and an adjoining hallway, but investigators said the door to the apartment and a stairway door many floors up had been left open, creating a flue that allowed smoke to quickly spread throughout the building.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

GENEVA —

UNHCR, the U.N. Refugee Agency is calling for international action to end the armed conflict in Africa’s Central Sahel region, a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 2.5 million over the last decade.

Data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project finds violence in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger caused more than 4,660 deaths in the first six months of 2020.

Statistics from other international monitoring groups and U.N. agencies show internal displacement in Africa’s Central Sahel region has increased tenfold since 2013, from 217,000 to 2.1 million by late 2021.

U.N. refugee spokesman Boris Cheshirkov says displacement continues to grow across the Sahel, as civilians flee violent attacks.

“Armed groups reportedly carried out over 800 deadly attacks last year. Such violence uprooted 450,000 people within their countries and forced a further 36,000 to flee to a neighboring country as a refugee,” he said. “Women and children are often the worst-affected and disproportionately exposed to extreme vulnerability and the threat of gender-based violence.”

Cheshirkov says conditions across the region continue to deteriorate. He says host communities and government authorities are buckling under increasing pressure despite their commitment to help the displaced.

He says humanitarian agencies are finding it increasingly difficult and dangerous to deliver assistance and protection. He says humanitarians risk road attack, ambush, and car jacking.

“What we have been calling for and we repeat this call again now is for a unified, a strategic, a substantial intervention in the Sahel that will make sure that international efforts are supporting the governments and host communities … and a security response cannot prevail on its own. It needs to be hand-in-glove with humanitarian and development action,” he said.

Cheshirkov says the UNHCR is leading an effort by United Nations and private agencies to provide shelter and protection services, including combating gender-based violence.

Source: Voice of America