Jordan Times
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Jordanian aid planes in
Beirut
By Mahmoud Al Abed with agency dispatches
Three Royal Jordanian Air Force planes landed
Wednesday at Beirut international airport in the first airlift of urgently
needed aid for blockaded Lebanon, as deliveries of assistance started to reach
thousands of displaced people in the besieged south.
“We exerted great efforts over the past few days and were able, thank God, to
overcome the air blockade imposed on Lebanon,” King Abdullah told the “We are
All Jordan” Forum (see report on page 2).
The planes carried a mobile hospital and medical equipment for the victims of
the Israeli aggression, the King said.
Carrying Royal Engineering Corps teams to reopen Beirut airport, the planes
returned last night after evacuating more Jordanian citizens from the Lebanese
capital.
They were the first aircraft to land at the airport for 13 days, after the
Israeli offensive left its runways cratered while an air and sea blockade
imposed on Beirut has left Lebanon almost cut off from the outside world.
Jordanian Charge d’Affaires Mohammad Fayez told reporters at the airport that
the planes were sent by the King “to help the Lebanese people in their current
crisis.”
“We face a grave humanitarian crisis,” UN Secretary General Kofi Annan told an
international conference on Lebanon in Rome, echoing a similar stark warning
from the UN food agency.
Lebanon’s Public Works Minister Mohammad Safadi welcomed the first plane at the
airport, saying: “It is the first plane that landed at Beirut airport since the
start of the events and it’s one of the three planes that will set up a field
hospital, an assistance from the Jordan Armed Forces.” Jordanian General
Mohammad Majali told Agence France-Presse that 200 medical staff would work at
the hospital, to be used for surgery and first aid. He said he was in contact
with the Lebanese army to decide where it should be set up.
Some 150 Lebanese people seriously wounded in Israeli bombardment were planned
to be evacuated from Lebanon on Wednesday onboard the aircraft, Safadi added.
By the afternoon, three military aircraft bearing Jordanian colours touched down
at Beirut airport, all loaded with medical equipment and medicines.
A top Jordanian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Amman had
obtained guarantees for the planes to land at the Lebanese capital’s airport and
evacuate the wounded.
“Jordan has used its good relations with Washington and Tel Aviv to help the
Lebanese people,” the official said.
Meanwhile, a United Nations convoy of 10 trucks carrying urgently needed aid was
heading for south Lebanon, the first such assistance to a region where main
roads have been left impassable and thousands displaced.
“This is the first UN convoy to the south in what is hoped to be a regular
dispatching of humanitarian supplies along safe humanitarian corridors inside
Lebanon to the people most affected by the ongoing military hostilities,” it
said.
The convoy, bound for the southern port of Tyre in a region that has been
relentlessly bombed by Israeli jets, includes 90 tonnes of wheat flour as well
as emergency medical kits.
The assistance came as the UN food agency warned Lebanon is heading for a “major
food crisis” owing to the mass flight of people and damage to infrastructure
hampering the main cereal harvest.
These factors “combined provide the recipe for a major food crisis”, said Henri
Josserand, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Global Information
and Early Warning System.
The mayor of the Lebanese village of Rmeich, which is housing 25,000 refugees
and has been cut off for 12 days by Israeli bombardment, made a desperate appeal
for help, citing a chronic shortage of “water, flour and medicines”.
UN relief chief Jan Egeland launched an urgent appeal Monday for $150 million to
help 800,000 civilians made homeless, warning that the “longer the hostilities
last, the more dramatic the humanitarian situation will become”. The European
Commission announced a further 40 million euros ($50 million) in humanitarian
aid for victims of the conflict in war-torn Lebanon while Saudi Arabia is giving
$500 million in infrastructure aid and $50 million in immediate assistance.
In Beirut, the head of the European Commission Delegation to Lebanon, Patrick
Renauld, told reporters “Europe is putting all its weight” behind helping the
Lebanese.
Fadl Shalak, head of the Council for Development and Reconstruction, told AFP
that Israel’s onslaught against Lebanon has already cost an estimated $2 billion
in damage to infrastructure, housing, businesses and factories.
The human cost has also been high, with about 400 people killed in Lebanon, the
vast majority of them civilians.
Also Wednesday, an Israeli air strike hit a truck carrying medical and food
supplies donated to Lebanon by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), killing its
Syrian driver and wounding two others, security sources said.
The truck was destroyed just a few kilometres from Lebanon’s eastern border with
Syria in the town of Anjar. Israel has been hitting targets in southern Lebanon,
Beirut and other parts of the country.
An Israeli air strike on July 18 hit another truck carrying aid donated by the
UAE. The truck, whose driver was killed, was travelling from Damascus.