World

Eleven newborn babies have perished in a hospital fire blamed on an electrical short circuit in the western Senegalese city of Tivaouane, authorities said Thursday.

In the latest in a series of hospital deaths that have exposed the weaknesses of the nation’s healthcare system, President Macky Sall announced the tragedy on Twitter just before midnight (0000 GMT).

“I have just learned with pain and dismay about the deaths of 11 newborn babies in the fire at the neonatal department of the public hospital,” Sall wrote.

“To their mothers and their families, I express my deepest sympathy,” he tweeted.

“Where is Mohamed?,” asked one of the distraught mothers outside Mame Abdou Aziz Sy Dabakh Hospital in the transport hub of Tivaouane.

Her baby son was taken to the hospital ten days ago and was baptised on Monday, Mohamed’s 54-year-old father Alioune Diouf said.

The city’s mayor Demba Diop said the fire had been caused by “a short circuit and spread very quickly”.

Local media quoted witnesses saying gas bottles exploded preventing any rescue attempts.

Health Minister Abdoulaye Diouf Sarr was quoted in media reports also blaming an electrical fault.

– ‘Beyond heartbroken’ –

The maternity unit was equipped to take care of 13 babies. 

“At the time of the fire, there were 11, whom nurses were unable to save,” the minister said.

Mayor Demba Diop said “three babies were saved”.

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted that he was “beyond heartbroken with this tragic news.

“I’m sending my deepest condolences to the parents and families of the babies who lost their lives.” 

Health Minister Sarr, who had been in Geneva attending a meeting with the World Health Organization, said “an investigation is under way to see what happened”.

The tragedy in Tivaouane comes after several other public health incidents in Senegal, which suffers from a great disparity between urban and rural areas in healthcare services. 

In the northern town of Linguere in late April, a fire broke out at a hospital and four newborn babies were killed. The town’s mayor cited an electrical malfunction in an air conditioning unit in the maternity ward.

– ‘This is unacceptable’ –

Wednesday’s accident came over a month after the nation mourned the death of a pregnant woman who waited in vain for a caesarean section.

The woman, Astou Sokhna, arrived at a hospital in the northern city of Louga in pain. The staff refused to accommodate her request for a C-section, saying it was not scheduled. 

She died on April 1, 20 hours after arrival.

Sokhna’s death caused a wave of outrage across the country over the dire state of the health system. Minister Sarr acknowledged two weeks later that the death could have been avoided. 

Three midwives on duty the night Sokhna died were given a six-month suspended prison sentence on May 11 by the High Court of Louga for “failure to assist a person in danger” in connection with her case. 

Amnesty International’s Senegal director Seydi Gassama said his organisation had called for an inspection and upgrade for neonatology services in hospitals across Senegal after the “atrocious” death of the four babies in Linguere.

With the new tragedy, Amnesty “urges the government to set up an independent commission of inquiry to determine responsibility and punish the culprits, no matter the level they are at in the state apparatus”, he tweeted. 

Opposition lawmaker Mamadou Lamine Diallo also responded with outrage to the Tivaouane blaze. 

“More babies burned in a public hospital… this is unacceptable @MackySall,” he tweeted. 

“We suffer with the families to whom we offer our condolences. Enough is enough.”

A former director of the Louvre Museum in Paris has been charged with conspiring to hide the origin of archaeological treasures that investigators suspect were smuggled out of Egypt in the chaos of the Arab Spring, a French judicial source said Thursday.

Jean-Luc Martinez was charged Wednesday after being taken in for questioning along with two French specialists in Egyptian art, who were not charged, another source close to the inquiry told AFP.

The Louvre, which is owned by the French state, is the world’s most visited museum with around 10 million visitors a year before the Covid-19 pandemic and is home to some of Western civilization’s most celebrated cultural heritage.

The museum declined to comment when contacted by AFP.

French investigators opened the case in July 2018, two years after the Louvre’s branch in Abu Dhabi bought a rare pink granite stele depicting the pharaoh Tutankhamun and four other historic works for eight million euros ($8.5 million).

Martinez, who ran the Paris Louvre from 2013 to 2021, is accused of turning a blind eye to fake certificates of origin for the pieces, a fraud thought to involve several other art experts, according to French investigative weekly Canard Enchaine.

He has been charged with complicity in fraud and “concealing the origin of criminally obtained works by false endorsement,” according to the judicial source.

Martinez is currently the French foreign ministry’s ambassador in charge of international cooperation on cultural heritage, which focuses in particular on fighting art trafficking.

“Jean-Luc Martinez contests in the strongest way his indictment in this case,” his lawyers told AFP in a statement.

– Arab Spring looting –

“For now, he will reserve his declarations for the judiciary, and has no doubt that his good faith will be established,” they said.

French investigators suspect that hundreds of artefacts were pillaged from Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries during protests in the early 2010s that became known as the Arab Spring.

They suspect the artefacts were then sold to galleries and museums that did not ask too many questions about previous ownership.

Martinez’s indictment comes after the German-Lebanese gallery owner who brokered the sale, Robin Dib, was arrested in Hamburg in March and extradited to Paris for questioning.

Marc Gabolde, a French Egyptologist, was quoted by Canard Enchaine as saying that he informed Louvre officials about suspicions related to the Tutankhamun stele but received no response.

The opening of the inquiry in 2018 roiled the Paris art market, a major hub for antiquities from Middle Eastern civilisations.

In June 2020, prominent Paris archaeology expert Christophe Kunicki and dealer Richard Semper were charged with fraud for false certification of looted works from several countries during the Arab Spring.

They also had a role in certifying another prized Egyptian work, the gilded sarcophagus of the priest Nedjemankh that was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2017.

Gabolde said an Egyptian art dealer, Habib Tawadros, was also involved in both suspect deals.

After New York prosecutors determined that the sarcophagus had been stolen during the revolts against Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in 2011, the Met said it had been a victim of false statements and fake documentation, and returned the coffin to Egypt.

Japan announced Thursday it will reopen to tourists from 36 countries starting June 10, ending a two-year pandemic closure, but travellers will only be allowed in with tour groups.

The decision comes after the government last week said it would test allowing small group tours with visitors from the United States, Australia, Thailand and Singapore from this month.

On Thursday, the government revised border controls to resume accepting package tours from 36 countries and regions where the Covid situation is relatively stable, it said in a statement.

The countries include Britain, Spain, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia.

Japan will also expand the number of airports that accept international flights to seven, adding Naha in its southern Okinawa prefecture and Chitose near Sapporo in northern Hokkaido.

For most of the pandemic Japan has barred all tourists and allowed only citizens and foreign residents entry, though even the latter have periodically been shut out.

All arrivals have to test negative before travel to Japan and most must be tested again on arrival, though triple-vaccinated people coming from certain countries can skip the additional test as well as a three-day quarantine required for others.

Tour groups are expected to take responsibility for ensuring visitors respect Japan’s near-universal mask-wearing and other measures that have helped keep the toll from Covid-19 comparatively low.

Just how many people will be able to take advantage of the careful reopening is unclear. A daily cap on people entering Japan is to be doubled to 20,000 next month, though tour groups are not expected to be counted in that figure, local media has reported.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has said he wants to ease border control measures, but moves are expected to proceed slowly, with strong public support for the current restrictions.

Japan welcomed a record 31.9 million foreign visitors in 2019 and had been on track to achieve its goal of 40 million in 2020 before the pandemic hit.

Shanghai schoolchildren will gradually resume some in-person classes in June with daily Covid-19 tests, the local government said Thursday, as the Chinese metropolis gradually emerges from a lengthy lockdown that brought it to a standstill.

The country has been fighting its worst coronavirus outbreak since the start of the pandemic, with the epicentre Shanghai banning its 25 million residents from leaving their homes for weeks.

Some of the city’s restrictions have recently eased as cases dwindle, though much of the population is still not allowed to venture outside for more than a few hours a day at most.

Schools have been shut since March 12, weeks before the megacity’s lockdown officially began. 

Students in the last two years of high school — who must prepare for the all-important college entrance examinations — will return to their campuses on June 6, Shanghai education official Yang Zhenfeng said at a press conference on Thursday.

They will be joined a week later by students in the final grade of middle school, while all other students are to remain home and attend online classes, Yang said.

“We will ensure that students get swabbed on campus after school every day,” with results from their PCR tests available by the next morning, Yang said.

Shanghai’s lockdown has taken a heavy toll on business and morale, pushing city authorities to allow some factories and public transport lines to resume operation in a patchy reopening.

China is the last major economy hewing to a zero-Covid policy with mass lockdowns, routine tests and movement restrictions whenever infection clusters emerge.

Those who test positive for Covid — even if they have no symptoms — are sent to mass quarantine centres or isolation facilities.

In another sign of slowing infections in Shanghai, state media reported that a 7,300-bed makeshift quarantine centre had been closed Wednesday. 

Converted from the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition and Convention Center, the hospital was the city’s first large-scale quarantine site for patients with mild to no symptoms.

Patients who stayed there and in other makeshift quarantine halls complained to AFP of inadequate sanitary conditions and overworked staff. 

China’s zero-Covid approach has been severely challenged by the rise of the Omicron variant, which has caused hundreds of thousands of infections nationwide this year.

Authorities have also turned greater attention to the low vaccination rate among the elderly population, long a weak point in the country’s defense against the virus.

Officials have ramped up incentives for older people to get jabbed, including one neighbourhood near Beijing’s Temple of Heaven which is dangling as much as 1000 yuan ($149) in gift cards for residents over 80 who get their first shot.

As wedding season gets under way in Ukraine despite months of war, couples are faced with a difficult choice — celebrate their unions in style or stay discreet so as not to upset anyone.

At the wedding registry in Irpin, a town close to Kyiv that has been devastated by Russia’s invasion, Ivan Khvatov, 39, and Olesya Khvatova, 41, celebrated their nuptials in restrained fashion.

There were no guests or witnesses present, the couple wore jeans and trainers and Wednesday’s ceremony conducted by a registrar was over in minutes — just time for a kiss after signing the registry.

“We didn’t tell anyone about it,” the groom told AFP.

“First of all, a lot of people who evacuated at the start of the war have not come back… also people might tell us that now is not the time.

“Many people, including our friends, lost their homes. They might not understand,” Khvatov said.

“Despite the war, we want to keep on living. We feel full of joy but we’re trying to hide it.”

Irpin found itself on the front line in the weeks after Russia invaded on February 24 and lived under Russian occupation for a month.

– ‘Bring back the hope’ –

Unlike in Kyiv, which has seen 3,800 weddings during the war, registry offices in the surrounding region shut down as Russian tanks advanced and many future brides fled across Europe. Men aged between 18 and 60 were eligible for military service and not allowed to leave.

In Irpin, the registry only re-opened on May 10.

“Morally it was hard after what the town went through,” said Liana Samoylenko, head of the Irpin department of registration of civil status acts, which deals with both weddings and death notices.

“Life is returning. And the weddings resuming bring back the hope that everything will be fine.

“These families that are being created will bring a new generation that will revive Ukraine,” she said.

Khvatov and Khvatova, who met at a glassware factory where they work, had been due to marry on March 17.

But, when the war began, Khvatova fled. She returned only when Russian troops withdrew and began focusing their attacks on the south and east of the country.

Mykhaylo Dewberry, 26, and his bride Anastasia, 20, also fled during the Russian occupation of the area.

– ‘Life has not stopped’ –

But they decided to have a much larger celebration with over 40 loved ones present.

The newly-weds also decided to pose for wedding photos in front of some charred ruins in Bucha, a town close to Irpin that has become synonymous with the alleged war crimes carried out by Russian troops.

“There have been many tragedies in this place, and we wanted to show that there can also be renewal… That life has not stopped,” said Dewberry, the adopted son of US evangelists.

As the couple posed, she in a long white dress and veil, he in a bright blue suit, passing drivers honked their horns to congratulate them.

Dewberry and Anastasia met at a Christian camp two years ago and he asked her to marry him a year ago.

The invasion forced the couple to put their preparations on hold.

“When I came back, I cried. So many people lost their lives!” Dewberry said.

“But God has said that after the darkness, there is light.”