• 'Full-on crisis': 5,000 refugees flee Syria daily, UN says

    The strain on Syria's neighbor Jordan is growing as thousands of refugees fleeing worsening violence flood across the border every day. NBC News' Stephanie Gosk reports.

    By Stephanie Nebehay and Khaled Yacoub Oweis, Reuters

    Updated at 10:25 a.m. ET: About 5,000 refugees are fleeing Syria each day, seeking safety in neighboring countries, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday.

    "This is a full-on crisis," Adrian Edwards, spokesman of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told a news briefing in Geneva. "There was a huge increase in January alone; we're talking about a 25 percent increase in registered refugee numbers over a single month."

    Since the conflict began two years ago, more than 787,000 Syrians have registered as refugees or are awaiting processing in the region, mainly in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Turkey, he said.

    In Syria, water shortages are worsening and supplies are sometimes contaminated, putting children at an increased risk of diseases, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) warned on Friday.

    The agency's first nationwide assessment revealed that water supplies in areas affected by the conflict are one-third of pre-crisis levels, UNICEF said in a statement.

    "It points to a severe disruption of services, damage done to water and sanitation systems, and limited access to basic hygiene, all of which puts children at much greater risk of disease," UNICEF spokeswoman Marixie Mercado told the briefing.

    Meanwhile in Damascus, President Bashar Assad's forces tried Friday to retake sections of a ring road around the capital that rebel forces had captured over the past two days. Fighter jets fired rockets around Jobar, Qaboun and Barzeh districts, sources told Reuters. 

    Activists said 46 people were killed on Thursday, mostly from army shelling. There were no immediate reports of casualties on Friday. More than 60,000 people have died in the civil war, according to U.N. figures.

    Fawaz Tello, a veteran opposition campaigner well connected with rebels in Damascus, said the operation was part of a slow encroachment by rebels on the capital.

    "Even if the rebels withdraw from the ring road, it will become, like other parts of the capital, too dangerous for the regime to use it," said Tello, speaking from Berlin.

    "We are witnessing a 'two steps forward, one step back' rebel strategy. It is a long way before we can say Assad has become besieged in Damascus, but when another main road is rendered useless for him the noose tightens and his control further erodes." 

    Slideshow: Syria uprising

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    A look back at the conflict that has overtaken the country.

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    Related:

    After almost 2 years, Syria's Assad allows UN aid into rebel-held area

    Full Syria coverage from NBC News

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  • 1.5 million children in imminent danger of starvation in West Africa

    A million and a half children are in imminent danger of starvation in West Africa. NBC's Rohit Kachroo reports on the crisis in the heart of the region, Niger. Warning: Some of the images in this report are distressing.

    By Rohit Kachroo, NBC News in Niger, west Africa

    One-and-a-half-million children are in imminent danger of starvation in West Africa, according to The United Nations Children's Fund, despite recent pledges of international aid.

    As world leaders gathered for the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development, aid workers warned there were only four weeks left to treat the effects of acute hunger before the rainy season makes huge swathes of the Sahel region inaccessible.

    Across western Africa, communities are caught between climate change, conflict and poverty -- yet the global economic crisis means international priorities lie elsewhere.

    For example, during its financial crisis Greece has received a hundred times more from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) than Niger during the last few years.

    Analysis: Mali coup shakes cocktail of instability in Sahel

    In hospitals here in southern Niger, a crisis is developing. Many children are at serious risk of dying and for each bed there is a skeletal frame as yet another hunger crisis strikes.

    Hair turned red by hunger
    Patients include a girl, Amina, whose hair has turned red by a lifetime without enough food, and Ibrahim, an eight-month-old whose tiny body is consumed by the effects of severe malnutrition.


    From many miles around, more young patients arrive all the time -- more work for the doctors who've rarely seen anything like this.

    Women complain about a lack of rain, but also about a lack of food. Their families may not survive the coming months, they say.

    Twenty years later, will world make good on Rio Earth Summit's 'broken promises'?

    “What you’re looking at are communities across wide areas that need assistance because, despite best efforts, they have been pushed off their ability to cope,” said Martin Dawes, regional spokesman for UNICEF.

    UNICEF Niger overview

    Some help is here: The international response has been swifter than it has been in the past. Earlier this month, the United States pledged over $81 million in additional assistance.

    But this is a crisis across many counties, affecting many millions, leaving many lives on a knife-edge – and the U.N. has already said it needs another $1.5 billion to tackle the problem.

    The months ahead are crucial here, amid grim warnings about more dry weather, even an influx of locusts. The world has been warned.

    Editor's note: Yahaman, the eight-month-old boy featured in our video report on the hunger crisis in Niger died late Tuesday night.

    Rohit Kachroo is NBC News' Africa Correspondent. Additional editing by Alastair Jamieson, msnbc.com.

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  • Taliban bans Pakistan polio vaccinations over drone strikes

    Anja Niedringhaus / AP file

    A Pakistani child is given a polio vaccination by a district health team worker outside a children's hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan on May 30, 2012.

    By Mushtaq Yusufzai, NBC News in Pakistan

    PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A Taliban commander in Pakistan’s tribal belt has banned a vaccination campaign against child polio in protest over frequent United States drone attacks there.

    Hafiz Gul Bahadur said that the U.S.-funded vaccinations for tens of thousands of children would be outlawed until drone attacks stopped.


    He also said the polio campaign could be a cover for CIA espionage – a reference to Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor reported to have helped American agencies identify Osama bin Laden.

    A pamphlet issued in Miranshah, North Waziristan and seen by NBC News accused the U.S. of “spending billions of rupees” on anti-polio measures while causing psychological disorders “due to drone strikes and round the clock hovering of spy planes over homes and villages”.

    Report: Obama embraces disputed definition of 'civilian' in drone wars

    “This situation created by U.S. drone strikes is more dangerous than the polio virus,” the pamphlet said.

    Pakistan is one of the three countries where polio remains endemic, according to UNICEF, accounting for about 30 percent of the world’s the polio cases. During 2011, the total number of cases was 198, up from 144 cases in 2010. There have already been 15 cases since the start of 2012.

    PhotoBlog: Pakistan distributes polio vaccine

    Out of the seven tribal regions, North Waziristan was perhaps one of the only places where local Ulema - or religious scholars - had issued a decree in favor of polio drops for children. The Taliban had also guaranteed the security of vaccination teams.

    Afridi, a Pakistan government doctor working for the CIA, used a vaccination campaign as a cover to collect DNA samples from Osama bin Laden's family members in Abbottabad – a move that helped identify the al-Qaeda leader, paving the way for his killing in May 2011.

    Afridi was given a 33-year prison term for treason following a trial last month.

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