Violence

Aid worker attacks and attacks against civilian aid operations were at their highest levels last year, said Abby Stoddard, senior program adviser for humanitarian action at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation and a partner with Humanitarian Outcomes, an independent research group. Preliminary numbers show 172 major attacks on aid workers in 2013; the previous peak year was 2008, when there were 165 attacks.

In Colombia, health-care providers have their own distinctive and protective emblem called the “misión médica”, a term that encompasses medical services as a whole. In August 2002, the promotion and use of this emblem to identify medical personnel, facilities and vehicles became a national priority when the Ministry of Health and Social Protection issued a decree stipulating that medical services must be protected.

Flashback to February 2011. Arab Spring. In Sana’a, Yemen, protesters peacefully assemble in a makeshift tent city, calling for an end to 33 years of the president’s autocratic rule. They are male and female, young and old, urban and rural. Their numbers grow to tens of thousands. On March 18 of that year, the protesters proclaim the day to be Friday of Dignity (Karama in Arabic). Tensions are high. Over the past few days, armed men said to be loyal to the president have built walls to contain the protesters in what had been dubbed “Change Square.” On the Friday of Dignity, as the protesters finish a prayer, masked gunmen set fire to the main wall and begin shooting into the trapped crowd.

In the Ukrainian capital, triage centers have sprung up around Independence Square, where dozens of people have died in the fighting. This video of three minutes and eleven seconds comes from The New York Times' website. See the related article, Converts Join with Militants in Kiev Clash.

The killing had begun. Bullets were flying, armed rebels were advancing and the terrified hospital staff had fled to the bush. Inside the abandoned hospital, three Canadian doctors refused to leave. Even as the fighting raged toward them, they performed an emergency cesarean section to save a pregnant woman’s life. Then they ran and hid as bullets began thwacking into the hospital in the town of Bor, South Sudan.