CAIRO: Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul-Gheit called on the international community on Tuesday to take immediate action in order to contain the dangerous developments in Yemen.
His spokesman Mahmoud Afifi quoted Aboul-Gheit as saying that the assassination of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Monday demonstrates the criminal nature of the Houthi militants.
Aboul-Gheit said Saleh’s death leaves Yemen, which is already exhausted by war, on the brink of further deterioration on the humanitarian level.
The Houthi militias have rejected all solutions that have been proposed to resolve the conflict that erupted in 2014, he said according to his spokesman. Their refusal to deal with any political efforts reveals that their devious plot is aimed at having the Yemeni people submit to their rule, he said, according to Asharq Al-Awsat.
This plan should be thwarted through all possible legitimate means, he said.
“It is time the international community, especially the influential powers, realized that the Houthi militia is a terrorist organization that is ruling the people through the force of arms. All means should be used to save the Yemeni people from this nightmare,” he stressed.
He warned Yemen’s situation could explode further and worsen humanitarian crisis. “All means should be tackled for the Yemeni people to get rid of this black nightmare,” he said.
The UAE is a key member of the mostly Gulf Arab alliance that sees the Houthis as a proxy of Iran.
Ahmed Ali, the powerful former military commander of Yemen’s elite Republican Guards, appeared to have been groomed to succeed his father, and he may be the family’s last chance to win back influence.
The whereabouts of Saleh’s other key relatives, who had led six days of street battles against the Houthis in the capital Sanaa before their rout on Monday, were unknown.
The Houthi leader, Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, reached out to Saleh’s political party and said his movement had no quarrel with it, underscoring the influence Saleh’s allies still have in Yemen.
The Houthis moved to cement their grip on the capital Tuesday.
Residents reported a few minor clashes between the Houthis and Saleh supporters late on Monday in southern districts which had been loyal to the slain strongman.
But there was no repetition of the heavy fighting that had rocked Sanaa for the five previous nights. New checkpoints manned by militias sprung up across Sanaa as their leaders hailed their control of the capital.
“We declare the end of security operations and the stabilization of the situation,” senior Houthi official Saleh Al-Sammad told the terrorists’ Almasirah television channel late on Monday.
Al-Sammad said he had ordered the security forces to “take steps against the saboteurs and all those who collaborated with them.”
The capital was awash with rumors of widespread arrests of suspected Saleh supporters in the army and the militia regime.
The former strongman retained the loyalty of some of the best-equipped units of the army after he was forced to step down as president in 2012. The Houthis called a mass rally for Tuesday afternoon to celebrate their “foiling of the plot.”
Saleh was forced to step down in 2012, after his forces waged a bloody crackdown on peaceful Arab Spring-inspired protests calling for his ouster.
The 75-year-old had survived a civil war, rebellion in the north, an Al-Qaeda insurgency in the south and a June 2011 bomb attack on his palace that wounded him badly.
Relatives of Yasser Al-Awadi, deputy secretary-general of Saleh’s General People’s Congress party (GPC) who was reported to have been killed by the Houthis on Monday, told Dubai-based Al-Arabiya TV he was safe but GPC Secretary-General Araf Al-Zouka had died in the Houthi attack on Saleh’s convoy.
In the southern city of Aden, where the internationally recognized government is based, residents set off fireworks and expressed joy.
Saleh’s legacy is mixed. He is still loved in much of the north and many supporters will bear a grudge toward his killers. Some feared Saleh’s death would only create more instability in Yemen.
“We expect things will get worse for us. This will be the beginning of a new conflict and more bloodshed. The war will not end soon,” said Aswan Abdu Khalid, an academic at the psychology department at the University of Aden.
Yemen’s war has led to what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The world body says millions of people may die in one of the worst famines of modern times, caused by warring parties blocking food supplies.
The death of Saleh, who once compared ruling Yemen to dancing on the heads of snakes, deepens the complexity of the multisided war.
Much is likely to depend on the future allegiances of his loyalists.
Arab League rings alarm bells over Houthi menace
Arab League rings alarm bells over Houthi menace
UN reports fighting in Sudan’s Darfur involving ‘heavy weaponry’
- The United States last month warned of a looming rebel military offensive on the city, a humanitarian hub that appears to be at the center of a newly opening front in the country’s civil war
PORT SUDAN: A major city in Sudan’s western region of Darfur has been rocked by fighting involving “heavy weaponry,” a senior UN official said Saturday.
Violence erupted in populated areas of El-Fasher, putting about 800,000 people at risk, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, said in a statement.
Wounded civilians were being rushed to hospital and civilians were trying to flee the fighting, she added.
“I am gravely concerned by the eruption of clashes in (El-Fasher) despite repeated calls to parties to the conflict to refrain from attacking the city,” said Nkweta-Salami.
“I am equally disturbed by reports of the use of heavy weaponry and attacks in highly populated areas in the city center and the outskirts of (El-Fasher), resulting in multiple casualties,” she added.
For more than a year, Sudan has suffered a war between the army, headed by the country’s de facto leader Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
The war has killed tens of thousands of people and forced more than 8.5 million to flee their homes in what the United Nations has called the “largest displacement crisis in the world.”
The RSF has seized four out of five state capitals in Darfur, a region about the size of France and home to around one quarter of Sudan’s 48 million people.
El-Fasher is the last major city in Darfur that is not under paramilitary control and the United States warned last month of a looming offensive on the city.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said Saturday he was “very concerned about the ongoing war in Sudan.”
“We need an urgent ceasefire and a coordinated international effort to deliver a political process that can get the country back on track,” he said in a post on social media site X.
Tunisian police arrest prominent lawyer critical of president
- Dozens of lawyers took to the streets in protest on Saturday night, carrying banners reading “Our profession will not kneel” and “We will continue the struggle” Saied came to power in free elections in 2019
TUNIS: Tunisian police stormed the building of the Deanship of Lawyers on Saturday and arrested Sonia Dahmani, a lawyer known for her fierce criticism of President Kais Saied, and then arrested two journalists who witnessed the confrontation, a journalists’ syndicate said.
Two IFM radio journalists, Mourad Zghidi and Borhen Bsaiss, were arrested, an official in the country’s main journalists’ syndicate told Reuters. The incident was the latest in a series of arrests and investigations targeting activists, journalists and civil society groups critical of Saied and the government. The move reinforces opponents’ fears of an increasingly authoritarian government ahead of presidential elections expected later this year.
Dahmani was arrested after she said on a television program this week that Tunisia is a country where life is not pleasant. She was commenting on a speech by Saied, who said there was a conspiracy to push thousands of undocumented migrants from Sub-Saharan countries to stay in Tunisia. Dahmani was called before a judge on Wednesday on suspicion of spreading rumors and attacking public security following her comments, but she asked for postponement of the investigation.
The judge rejected her request. Dozens of lawyers took to the streets in protest on Saturday night, carrying banners reading “Our profession will not kneel” and “We will continue the struggle” Saied came to power in free elections in 2019. Two years later he seized additional powers when he shut down the elected parliament and moved to rule by decree before assuming authority over the judiciary.
Since Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, the country has won more press freedoms and is considered one of the more open media environments in the Arab world. Politicians, journalists and unions, however, say that freedom of the press faces a serious threat under the rule of Saied. The president has rejected the accusations and said he will not become a dictator.
Syrian Kurdish force hands over 2 Daesh members suspected in 2014 mass killing of Iraqi troops
- Iraq has, over the past several years, put on trial and later executed dozens of Daesh members over their involvement in the Speicher massacre
BEIRUT: Syria’s US-backed Kurdish-led force has handed over to Baghdad two Daesh militants suspected of involvement in mass killings of Iraqi soldiers in 2014, a war monitor said.
The report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights came a day after the Iraqi National Intelligence Service said it had brought back to the country three Daesh members from outside Iraq. The intelligence service did not provide more details.
Daesh captured an estimated 1,700 Iraqi soldiers after seizing Saddam Hussein‘s hometown of Tikrit in 2014. The soldiers were trying to flee from nearby Camp Speicher, a former US base.
BACKGROUND
Daesh captured an estimated 1,700 Iraqi soldiers after seizing Saddam Hussein‘s hometown of Tikrit in 2014.
Shortly after taking Tikrit, Daesh posted graphic images of Daesh militants shooting and killing the soldiers.
Farhad Shami, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said the US-backed force handed over two Daesh members to Iraq.
It was not immediately clear where Iraqi authorities brought the third suspect from.
The 2014 killings, known as the Speicher massacre, sparked outrage across Iraq and partially fueled the mobilization of militias in the fight against Daesh.
Iraq has, over the past several years, put on trial and later executed dozens of Daesh members over their involvement in the Speicher massacre.
The Observatory said the two Daesh members were among 20 captured recently in a joint operation with the US-led coalition in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, once the capital of Daesh’s self-declared caliphate.
Despite their defeat in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in March 2019, the extremist sleeper cells are still active and have been carrying out deadly attacks against SDF and Syrian government forces.
Shami said a car rigged with explosives and driven by a suicide attacker tried on Friday night to storm a military checkpoint for the Deir El-Zour Military Council. This Arab majority faction is part of the SDF in the eastern Syrian village of Shuheil.
Shami said that when the guards tried to stop the car, the attacker blew himself up, killing three US-backed fighters.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but it was similar to previous explosions carried out by IS militants.
The SDF is holding over 10,000 captured Daesh fighters in around two dozen detention facilities, including 2,000 foreigners whose home countries have refused to repatriate them.
Protesters return to streets across Israel, demanding hostage release
- Family members of the hostages, carrying pictures of their loved ones still in captivity, joined the crowds that demonstrated in Tel Aviv
TEL AVIV: Thousands of Israelis took to the streets on Saturday demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government do more to secure the release of hostages being held in the Gaza Strip by Islamist group Hamas.
Family members of the hostages, carrying pictures of their loved ones still in captivity, joined the crowds that demonstrated in Tel Aviv.
One of them was Naama Weinberg, whose cousin Itai Svirsky was abducted during Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault on Israeli towns and, according to Israeli authorities, was killed in captivity. In a speech she referenced a video Hamas made public on Saturday, claiming that another of the Israeli captives had died.
“Soon, even those who managed to survive this long will no longer be among the living. They must be saved now,” Weinberg said.
As the evening progressed, some protesters blocked a main highway in the city before being dispersed by police, who used water cannons to push back the crowd. At least three people were arrested.
Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack sparked the devastating war in Gaza, now raging for nearly seven months.
UN Security Council seeks inquiry into mass graves in Gaza
- The UN rights office in late April had called for an independent investigation into reports of mass graves at Al-Shifa and the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis
NEW YORK: The UN Security Council has called for an immediate and independent investigation into mass graves allegedly containing hundreds of bodies near hospitals in Gaza.
In a statement, members of the council expressed their “deep concern over reports of the discovery of mass graves, in and around the Nasser and Al-Shifa medical facilities in Gaza, where several hundred bodies, including women, children and older persons, were buried.”
The members stressed the need for “accountability” for any violations of international law.
They called on investigators to be given “unimpeded access to all locations of mass graves in Gaza to conduct immediate, independent, thorough, comprehensive, transparent and impartial investigations.”
FASTFACT
The World Health Organization said in April that Al-Shifa, in Gaza City, had been reduced to an ‘empty shell,’ with many bodies found in the area.
Hospitals in the Gaza Strip have been repeatedly targeted since the beginning of the Israeli military operation in the Palestinian territory following the October 7 attack on southern Israel by Gaza-based Hamas militants.
The World Health Organization said in April that Al-Shifa, in Gaza City, had been reduced to an “empty shell,” with many bodies found in the area.
The Israeli army has said around 200 Palestinians were killed during its military operations there.
Bodies have reportedly been found buried in two graves in the hospital’s courtyard.
The UN rights office in late April had called for an independent investigation into reports of mass graves at Al-Shifa and the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis.
Gaza officials said at the time that health workers at the Nasser complex had uncovered hundreds of bodies of Palestinians they alleged had been killed and buried by Israeli forces.
Israel’s army has dismissed the claims as “baseless and unfounded.”
The statement on Friday from the Security Council did not say who would conduct the investigations.
But it “reaffirmed the importance of allowing families to know the fate and whereabouts of their missing relatives, consistent with international humanitarian law.”
Israel’s offensive has killed at least 34,943 people in the Gaza Strip, primarily women and children, the Health Ministry in the territory said.
