Coronavirus Pushes Some Iraqis Into Poverty

Iraqi Muslims perform Ramadan prayers at a store, after the Iraqi government ordered all mosques to stay closed, following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), during the holy fasting month of Ramadan, in Baghdad's Adhamiya district, Iraq April 26, 2020. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani
Iraqi Muslims perform Ramadan prayers at a store, after the Iraqi government ordered all mosques to stay closed, following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), during the holy fasting month of Ramadan, in Baghdad's Adhamiya district, Iraq April 26, 2020. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani
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Coronavirus Pushes Some Iraqis Into Poverty

Iraqi Muslims perform Ramadan prayers at a store, after the Iraqi government ordered all mosques to stay closed, following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), during the holy fasting month of Ramadan, in Baghdad's Adhamiya district, Iraq April 26, 2020. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani
Iraqi Muslims perform Ramadan prayers at a store, after the Iraqi government ordered all mosques to stay closed, following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), during the holy fasting month of Ramadan, in Baghdad's Adhamiya district, Iraq April 26, 2020. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani

When shops and homes shutter at curfew, some Iraqis in this Baghdad district say it reminds them of past traumas that destroyed lives and livelihoods: sectarian death squads, foreign invasion, and the ruin wrought by international sanctions.

The COVID-19 pandemic is the source of their current suffering. In interviews with Reuters, half a dozen people in the Adhamiya neighborhood said it has driven their families into the worst poverty they can remember.

"For two years I squatted at a friend's to save rent and sent all my earnings - maybe $350 a month - to my sick wife and children in Turkey," said Abdul Wahhab Qassim, a 46-year-old day laborer. "Since the coronavirus lockdown there's no work. I can offer my family nothing."

Qassim says he and a growing number of neighbors who do casual labor or run small stores have watched their modest incomes evaporate. They collect evening meals donated by a family at the local mosque during the holy month of Ramadan, often accepting this charity for the first time.

"It took less than two months of curfew for many to lose work," Qassim said.

Iraq has so far avoided a catastrophic spread of the new coronavirus, recording some 2,200 cases and less than 100 deaths, according to the health ministry.

But as in many countries, the measures required, including a nationwide curfew in place since March, have put stores out of business and left breadwinners idling at home, hitting vulnerable sections of the population hard.

A spokesman for Iraq's planning ministry, Abdul Zahra al-Hindawi, said 20 percent of the population currently lives in poverty and that is expected to rise to nearly 30 percent this year because of people put out of work by the crisis.

The government last month announced a $25 monthly stipend for households struggling for income without state wages.

Hindawi said 13 million people, almost a third of Iraqis, applied for the aid.

Plummeting prices for oil, which accounts for almost all Iraq's revenue, are already squeezing the economy, forcing the government to mull cuts to its vast public sector payroll. The price of oil has fallen more than 55% since the year began.

Iraq faces the same dilemma as much of the world – whether to ease restrictions to help economic activity, or maintain a lockdown to avoid the virus's spread.

Authorities recently lifted the curfew during the daytime but announced new fines for breaking it at night. The World Health Organization says Iraq should maintain a lockdown.

To get their free evening meals, Qassim and his neighbors say they skirt the curfew. With the mosque closed, they gather to pray, shake hands and break the Ramadan fast at a shopfront each night. Men eat from large plastic trays. Women collect polystyrene boxes of rice and chicken to take home.

Ikhlas Majeed, who cooks the food in her small kitchen, said there are more families in need than ever.

"These people have no state income. They earn what they can make in a day running stores or doing laboring. Because of past conflict there are many households without men who have no income," she said.

Israa Khalil, whose two brothers were killed in 2006 and whose husband died of a throat infection several years ago, supported her two children with money from a state fund paid to her mother. But her mother died in March and that compensation is no longer paid.

"As a widow, I can't go out looking for jobs," she said. She said she now owes money to local stores including the grocer, who said he makes a quarter of what he did before coronavirus.

Hindawi said the planning ministry was undertaking a study to measure the number of Iraqis who had lost work or fallen into poverty. A government spokesman could not be reached for further comment on the economic crisis.



Gaza Aid System Under Pressure as Thousands Seek Food

Palestinians walk next to a donkey-drawn cart loaded with aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, near an area of Gaza known as the Netzarim corridor, May 29, 2025. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Palestinians walk next to a donkey-drawn cart loaded with aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, near an area of Gaza known as the Netzarim corridor, May 29, 2025. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
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Gaza Aid System Under Pressure as Thousands Seek Food

Palestinians walk next to a donkey-drawn cart loaded with aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, near an area of Gaza known as the Netzarim corridor, May 29, 2025. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Palestinians walk next to a donkey-drawn cart loaded with aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, near an area of Gaza known as the Netzarim corridor, May 29, 2025. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed

After a slow and chaotic start to the new US-backed aid system in Gaza, thousands of Palestinians have been arriving at distribution points, seeking desperately needed food despite scenes of disorder and fears of violence.

The two hubs run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private group sponsored by the United States and endorsed by Israel, have been running since Tuesday, but the launch was marred by tumultuous scenes when thousands rushed the fences and forced private contractors providing security to retreat.

An Israeli military official told Reuters that the GHF was now operating four aid distribution sites, three in the Rafah area in the south and one in the Netzarim area in central Gaza.

The new system has been heavily criticized by the United Nations and other aid groups as an inadequate and flawed response to the humanitarian crisis left by Israel's 11-week blockade on aid entering Gaza.

Wessam Khader, a 25-year-old father of a three-year-old boy, said he had gone to a site near Rafah, despite widespread suspicions of the new system among Palestinians and warnings from militant group Hamas to stay away.

He said he had gone every day since Tuesday but only obtained a 3 kg (6.6 pounds) package containing flour, canned sardines, salt, noodles, biscuits and jam on the first day.

"I was driven by the hunger, for several weeks we had no flour, we had nothing in the tent," he told Reuters by telephone from Rafah. "My son wakes every day asking for something to eat and I can't give him."

When he arrived with his father and brother, there were thousands there already and no sign of the identification process that Israeli officials had said would be in place to screen out anyone considered to have links to Hamas.

"I didn't see anything, no one asked for me for anything, and if there was an electronic gate or screening I think it collapsed under the feet of the crowds," he said. The gates, the wire fences were all brought down and even plastic pipes, metal boards and fencing material was carried off.

"People were hungry and they took everything at the site," he said.

Earlier this week, GHP said it had anticipated such reactions from a "distressed population".

For Palestinians in northern Gaza, cut off from the distribution points in the south even that remains out of reach.

"We see videos about the aid, and people getting some, but they keep saying no trucks can enter north where we live," said Ghada Zaki, a 52-year-old mother of seven in Gaza City, told Reuters via chat app.

AIR STRIKES

Israel imposed the blockade at the beginning of March, saying supplies were being stolen by Hamas and used to entrench its control over Gaza. Hamas denies stealing aid and says it has protected aid trucks from looters. Even as thousands made their way to the distribution site, Israeli jets continued to pound areas of Gaza, killing at least 45 people on Thursday, including 23 people in a strike that hit several houses in the Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical workers said.

The Israeli military said it hit dozens of targets in Gaza overnight, including what it said were weapons storage dumps, sniper positions and tunnels. Speculation around a possible ceasefire agreement grew after US President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff said the White House was preparing a draft document that could provide the basis for an agreement.

However, it was unclear what changes to previous proposals were being considered that might overcome the deep differences between Hamas and Israel that have stymied previous attempts to restore a ceasefire deal that broke down in March after only two months.

Israel has insisted that Hamas disarm completely and be dismantled as a military and governing force and that all of the 58 hostages still held in Gaza must come back before it will agree to end the war.

Hamas has rejected the demand to give up its weapons and says Israel must commit to ending the war for a deal to work.

Israel has come under increasing international pressure, with many European countries that have normally been reluctant to criticize Israel openly demanding an end to the war and a major humanitarian relief effort.