KUWAIT CITY: Kuwait’s emir on Wednesday urged Yemen’s warring parties to press ahead with peace talks, a day after the government delegation threatened to pull out of the UN-brokered negotiations.
Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, whose country is hosting the talks, called on the two sides to continue negotiating to “reach positive results,” the official KUNA news agency reported.
The appeal came after the emir met separately with the two delegations and the UN envoy, in an attempt to salvage the talks that began four weeks ago.
Senior officials from Kuwait have repeatedly mediated and sought to prevent the collapse of the negotiations aimed at ending nearly 14 months of bloodshed.
Yemeni Foreign Minister Abdulmalek Al-Mikhlafi, who heads the government delegation, threatened on Tuesday to quit the talks with Iran-backed rebels, giving the UN envoy a “last chance” to make them comply with UN resolutions.
He said the rebels should acknowledge their respect to UN Security Council Resolution 2216 which demands the insurgents withdraw from areas they occupied since 2014 and surrender arms.
The United Nations estimates that more than 6,400 people have been killed and 2.8 million displaced in Yemen since March last year.
Kuwait emir urges Yemen foes to press on with peace talks
Kuwait emir urges Yemen foes to press on with peace talks
Israeli strikes killed eight people in south Lebanon: state media
- Israeli strikes killed eight people in Lebanon on Thursday as Israel renewed its evacuation call for vast areas of the country’s south, long a stronghold of Hezbollah
BEIRUT: Israeli strikes killed eight people in Lebanon on Thursday as Israel renewed its evacuation call for vast areas of the country’s south, long a stronghold of Hezbollah.
The Iran-backed militant group, which dragged Lebanon into the regional war on Monday when it launched an attack on Israel, said it had launched missiles at positions in the Galilee area.
The National News Agency (NNA) reported that the mayor of a village in the Nabatieh region of south Lebanon and his wife were killed in one strike, while in a nearby village another strike killed two children and their parents.
The Lebanese health ministry said two people were killed by a strike on a car near the city of Zahle in the east of the country.
There were new strikes on the southern suburbs of the capital, Hezbollah’s main bastion, early on Thursday, NNA reported, with AFPTV footage showing smoke coming from the area.
It also said a pre-dawn Israeli drone strike hit an apartment in Beddawi, a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli in the north of Lebanon, killing senior Hamas official Wassim Atallah Al-Ali and his wife.
Also on Thursday, Israel renewed its warning to residents of hundreds of square kilometers (miles) of southern Lebanon to evacuate because of military action.
Arabic-language spokesman for the Israeli military Avichay Adraee posted on X: “Urgent warning to residents of southern Lebanon: you must immediately continue evacuating to the north of the Litani river.”
The warning included the cities of Tyre and Bint Jbeil.
On Tuesday, Israel’s military said it was creating a buffer zone inside Lebanon to protect Israeli residents.
The following day, it said troops from three divisions, including infantry, armored and engineering units were operating inside Lebanon.
