DUBAI, 8 April 2007 (IRIN) - DUBAI, 8 April 2007 (IRIN) - CONTENTS:

EGYPT: Bird flu cases hit 32 IRAQ: Relocation of Arabs from Kirkuk could trigger violence IRAQ: Fleeing relief workers leave gap in aid delivery IRAQ: Hassan Khalid Hayderi: "Either you give us good marks or you will die"

ISRAEL-SUDAN: Israeli NGOs strive to release jailed refugees SYRIA: Squatters in capital struggle for basic services UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: 'Humanitarians must change perceptions'

EGYPT: Bird flu cases hit 32

The number of people to test positive for the bird flu virus in Egypt has risen to 32, health officials confirmed on Monday. The figure rose after a four-year-old girl from Qaloubiya governorate in Egypt's Nile Delta tested positive for H5N1, the avian flu virus. The case, confirmed on Monday, is the third such incidence over the past four days.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71133

IRAQ: Relocation of Arabs from Kirkuk could trigger violence

The Iraqi government should delay the relocation of Arabs from the northern city of Kirkuk as the move could prompt inter-ethnic tension and violence, analysts say. On 29 March, the Iraqi cabinet endorsed a decision adopted by a governmental committee to relocate and compensate thousands of Arabs who had moved to Kirkuk, about 250km north of Baghdad, as part of former president Saddam Hussein's 'Arabisation' policy, dating back to the 1980s.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71167

IRAQ: Fleeing relief workers leave gap in aid delivery

Iraq is the deadliest country in the world for aid workers, specialists say. Treated as Western collaborators by insurgents and assumed to have sectarian bias by militias, they face death on a daily basis in the course of meeting the needs of an increasingly desperate population.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71126

Hassan Khalid Hayderi, Iraq "Either you give us good marks or you will die"

Hassan Khalid Hayderi, 54, is a professor of mathematics at Basra University, 550km south of the capital, Baghdad. He and his family are leaving Iraq as soon as his brother finds him a job in Jordan because he has received death threats from students demanding easy exams and better marks.

"After 20 years as professor of mathematics in Basra and Baghdad, I have decided to leave my job and the country. Teachers in Iraq have been targeted since the US-led invasion in 2003, but from February last year our situation has worsened because of threats from inside our classrooms.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71201

ISRAEL-SUDAN: Israeli NGOs strive to release jailed refugees

Israeli NGOs are campaigning to have 120 Sudanese refugees who fled violence in first Sudan and then Egypt released from the Israeli prisons they are being held in. The refugees are among 320 Sudanese, mostly young men, who trekked for up to a week through the desert to cross Israel's porous 200km border. They told IRIN that the desert was littered with the bodies of those who did not survive the gruelling journey. Once inside Israel, many were imprisoned.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71175

SYRIA: Squatters in capital struggle for basic services

From the top of a mountain, Abu Ali, his two daughters, two sons and wife, have an unbroken view of the Syrian capital, Damascus. They left their home on Syria's Mediterranean coast years ago and came to the city, which still does not recognise them as residents.

Abu Ali and his family live at the highest point of the mountain-flank confusion of concrete and cables that is Aysh Warrwar, a neighbourhood of squatters on the north-eastern edge of Damascus living in houses built without government permission, on land without a land-use blueprint.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71181

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: 'Humanitarians must change perceptions'

Humanitarians must constantly reassert and redefine their roles to secure the necessary humanitarian space within which aid can effectively and safely reach those most in need, was the defining message of the fourth Dubai International Aid & Development Conference & Exhibition (DIHAD).

Innovative approaches are needed to mount co-ordinated responses to complex emergencies and natural disasters, Jean-Marie Fakhouri, Deputy Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General and Humanitarian/Reconstruction Coordinator for Iraq, said in his keynote address in Dubai, the second city of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71163

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