SANAA: The UN envoy for Yemen carried a plan to halt fighting around the key aid port of Hodeidah where Houthi militia have been battling a regional coalition as he arrived Saturday in the rebel-held capital Sanaa for emergency talks.
Martin Griffiths was expected to propose to militia leaders that they cede control of the Red Sea port to a UN-supervised committee and halt heavy clashes against advancing government troops backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The envoy did not make any statement on his arrival at Sanaa international airport.
More than 70 percent of Yemeni imports pass through Hodeidah’s docks and the fighting has raised UN fears of humanitarian catastrophe in a country already teetering on the brink of famine.
Yemen’s government and its allies launched their offensive on Wednesday, after at least 139 combatants have been killed, according to medical and military sources.
The Iranian-backed Houthi militia have controlled the Hodeidah region with its population of some 600,000 people since 2014.
The capture of Hodeidah would be the coalition’s biggest victory of the war so far, and militia leader Abdel Malek Al-Houthi on Thursday called on his forces to put up fierce resistance and turn the region into a quagmire for coalition troops.
The Yemeni army on Saturday claimed it had seized control of the militia base at Hodeidah’s disused airport, which has been closed since 2014.
An AFP correspondent on the front line could not confirm the report and a spokesman for the coalition, which has troops taking part in the offensive, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
But military sources later denied that the army had entered the airport.
They told AFP, however, that sporadic clashes were underway at the airport’s southern gate.
The highway between Hodeidah and the government-held port of Mokha was also the scene of fighting, they said, adding that loyalist forces had suffered “losses.”
The United Nations and relief organizations have warned that any all-out assault on Hodeidah would put hundreds of thousands of people at risk.
The fighting is already nearing densely populated residential areas, the Norwegian Refugee Council warned, and aid distributions have been suspended in the west of the city.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said thousands were likely to flee if the fighting continued.
On Thursday, the UN Security Council demanded that Hodeidah port be kept open to vital food shipments but stopped short of backing a Swedish call for a pause in the offensive to allow for talks on a militia withdrawal.
UN envoy in Yemen for Hodeidah crisis talks
UN envoy in Yemen for Hodeidah crisis talks
- UN envoy for Yemen has a plan to halt fighting around the key aid port of Hodeidah where Houthi militia have been battling a regional coalition
- Martin Griffiths was expected to propose to militia leaders that they cede control of the Red Sea port to a UN-supervised committee
Mediator Qatar urges international community to prevent Rafah ‘genocide’
- Israel struck targets in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after seizing the main border crossing with Egypt
- African Union condemns the Israeli military’s moves into southern Gaza’s Rafah
DOHA: Qatar called on the international community on Wednesday to prevent a “genocide” in Rafah following Israel’s seizure of the Gaza city’s crossing with Egypt and threats of a wider assault.
In a statement the Gulf state, which has been mediating between Israel and militant group Hamas, appealed “for urgent international action to prevent the city from being invaded and a crime of genocide being committed.”
Israel struck targets in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after seizing the main border crossing with Egypt. Israel has vowed for weeks to launch a ground incursion into Rafah, despite a clamour of international objection.
The attacks on the southern city, which is packed with displaced civilians, came as negotiators and mediators met in Cairo to try to hammer out a hostage-release and truce deal in the seven-month war.
Qatar, which has hosted Hamas’s political office in Doha since 2012, has been engaged — along with Egypt and the United States — in months of behind-the-scenes mediation between Israel and the Palestinian group.
The African Union condemned Wednesday the Israeli military’s moves into southern Gaza’s Rafah, calling for the international community to stop “this deadly escalation” of the war.
AU Commission chief Moussa Faki Mahamat “firmly condemns the extension of this war to the Rafah crossing,” said a statement after Israeli tanks captured the key corridor for humanitarian aid into the besieged Palestinian territory.
Faki “expresses his extreme concern at the war undertaken by Israel in Gaza which results, at every moment, in massive deaths and systematic destruction of the conditions of human life,” the statement said.
“He calls on the entire international community to effectively coordinate collective action to stop this deadly escalation.”
Israel says it has reopened Kerem Shalom border crossing for Gaza aid
- Erez border crossing between Israel and northern Gaza is also open for aid deliveries into the Palestinian territory
JERUSALEM: Israel said it reopened the Kerem Shalom border crossing to humanitarian aid for Gaza Wednesday, four days after closing it in response to a rocket attack that killed four soldiers.
“Trucks from Egypt carrying humanitarian aid, including food, water, shelter equipment, medicine and medical equipment donated by the international community are already arriving at the crossing,” the army said in a joint statement with COGAT, the defense ministry body that oversees Palestinian civil affairs.
The supplies will be transferred to the Gaza side of the crossing after undergoing inspection, it added.
The statement said the Erez border crossing between Israel and northern Gaza is also open for aid deliveries into the Palestinian territory.
The Kerem Shalom crossing was closed after a Hamas rocket attack killed four soldiers and wounded more than a dozen on Sunday.
On Tuesday, Israeli troops seized control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt after launching an incursion into the eastern sector of the city.
The United Nations and Israel’s staunchest ally the United States both condemned the closure of the two crossings which are a lifeline for civilians facing looming famine.
‘A blessing’: Rains refill Iraq’s drought-hit reservoirs
- The last time Darbandikhan was full was in 2019
- Iraq is considered by the United Nations to be one of the five countries most vulnerable to some impacts of climate change
Darbandikhan: The reservoir behind the massive Darbandikhan dam, tucked between the rolling mountains of northeastern Iraq, is almost full again after four successive years of drought and severe water shortages.
Iraqi officials say recent rainfall has refilled some of the water-scarce country’s main reservoirs, taking levels to a record since 2019.
“The dam’s storage capacity is three million cubic meters (106 million cubic feet). Today, with the available reserves, the dam is only missing 25 centimeters (10 inches) of water to be considered full,” Saman Ismail, director of the Darbandikhan facility, told AFP on Sunday.
Built on the River Sirwan, the dam is located south of the city of Sulaimaniyah in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region.
“In the coming days, we will be able to say that it’s full,” said Ismail, with the water just a few meters below the road running along the edge of the basin.
The last time Darbandikhan was full was in 2019, and since then “we’ve only had years of drought and shortages,” said Ismail.
He cited “climate change in the region” as a reason, “but also dam construction beyond Kurdistan’s borders.”
The central government in Baghdad says upstream dams built in neighboring Iran and Turkiye have heavily reduced water flow in Iraq’s rivers, on top of rising temperatures and irregular rainfall.
This winter, however, bountiful rains have helped to ease shortages in Iraq, considered by the United Nations to be one of the five countries most vulnerable to some impacts of climate change.
In Iraq, rich in oil but where infrastructure is often run-down, torrential rains have also flooded the streets of Kurdistan’s regional capital Irbil.
Four hikers died last week in floods in Kurdistan, and in Diyala, a rural province in central Iraq, houses were destroyed.
Ali Radi Thamer, director of the dam authority at Iraq’s water resources ministry, said that most of the country’s six biggest dams have experienced a rise in water levels.
At the Mosul dam, the largest reservoir with a capacity of about 11 billion cubic meters, “the storage level is very good, we have benefitted from the rains and the floods,” said Thamer.
Last summer, he added, Iraq’s “water reserves... reached a historic low.”
“The reserves available today will have positive effects for all sectors,” Thamer said, including agriculture and treatment plants that produce potable water, as well as watering southern Iraq’s fabled marshes that have dried up in recent years.
He cautioned that while 2019 saw “a sharp increase in water reserves,” it was followed by “four successive dry seasons.”
Water has been a major issue in Iraq, a country of 43 million people that faces a serious environmental crisis from worsening climate change, with temperatures frequently hitting 50 degrees Celsius in summer.
“Sure, today we have rain and floods, water reserves that have relatively improved, but this does not mean the end of drought,” Thamer said.
About five kilometers (three miles) south of Darbandikhan, terraces near a small riverside tourist establishment are submerged in water.
But owner Aland Salah prefers to see the glass half full.
“The water of the Sirwan river is a blessing,” he told AFP.
“When the flow increases, the area grows in beauty.
“We have some damage, but we will keep working.”
Israel launches fresh Gaza strikes as negotiators work toward truce
- The White House condemned the interruption to humanitarian deliveries
- One strike on an apartment in devastated Gaza City killed seven members of the same family and wounded several other people
RAFAH: Israel struck targets in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after seizing the main border crossing with Egypt, where negotiators were working to make good on their “last chance” to cement a ceasefire deal.
After weeks of vowing to launch a ground incursion into the border city of Rafah despite international objections, Israeli tanks moved in Tuesday, capturing the crossing that has served as the main conduit for aid into the besieged Palestinian territory.
The White House condemned the interruption to humanitarian deliveries, with a senior US official later revealing Washington had paused a shipment of bombs last week after Israel failed to address US concerns over its Rafah plans.
The push into the southern city, which is packed with displaced civilians, came as negotiators and mediators met in Cairo to try and hammer out a hostage release deal and truce in the seven-month war between Israel and the militant group Hamas.
A senior Hamas official, requesting anonymity, warned this would be Israel’s “last chance” to free the scores of hostages still in militants’ hands.
Egypt’s state-linked Al-Qahera News reported Tuesday that mediators from Qatar, the United States and Egypt were meeting with a Hamas delegation.
It later reported that “all parties” including Israel had agreed to resume talks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier that his country’s delegation was already in Cairo.
Israel’s close ally and chief military backer the United States said it was hopeful the two sides could “close the remaining gaps.”
“Everybody’s coming to the table,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters. “That’s not insignificant.”
Rafah bombing
Despite the Cairo talks, witnesses and a local hospital reported Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip overnight into Wednesday morning, including around Rafah.
One strike on an apartment in devastated Gaza City killed seven members of the same family and wounded several other people early Wednesday, the Al-Ahli hospital said.
Israel’s Rafah operation began hours after Hamas announced late Monday it had accepted a truce proposal — one Israel said was “far” from what it had previously agreed to.
Still, the announcement prompted cheering crowds to take to the streets in Gaza, though Rafah resident Abu Aoun Al-Najjar said the “indescribable joy” was short-lived.
“It turned out to be a bloody night,” he told AFP, as more Israeli bombardments “stole our joy.”
Taking control of Rafah crossing
Israeli army footage showed tanks taking “operational control” of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing on Tuesday.
Netanyahu described the operation as “a very important step” in denying Hamas “a passage that was essential for establishing its reign of terror.”
But UN humanitarian office spokesman Jens Laerke said Israel had also denied his organization access to both Rafah and Kerem Shalom — another major aid crossing on the border with Israel.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged Israel to “immediately” reopen both crossings, calling the closures “especially damaging to an already dire humanitarian situation.”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre offered a similar view, calling the closures “unacceptable.”
She said the Kerem Shalom crossing was expected to reopen on Wednesday.
Hours later, a senior Biden administration official speaking on condition of anonymity revealed the United States had “paused one shipment of weapons last week” after Israel failed to address its concerns over the Rafah incursion, which Washington has vocally opposed.
The shipment had consisted of more than 3,500 heavy-duty bombs, the official said.
It was the first time that Biden had acted on a warning he gave Netanyahu in April — namely that US policy on Gaza would depend on how Israel treated civilians.
The US official said Washington was “especially focused” on the use of the heaviest 2,000-pound (907 kilogram) bombs “and the impact they could have in dense urban settings.”
However, the official added: “We have not made a final determination on how to proceed with this shipment.”
The Pentagon, meanwhile, said the US military had completed construction of an aid pier off Gaza’s coast, but weather conditions mean it is currently unsafe to move the two-part facility into place.
The US Central Command announced its leader, General Michael Erik Kurilla, had been in Egypt on Monday and Tuesday to “gain a deeper understanding of the perspectives of Egyptian military leaders on regional security and the status of humanitarian aid.”
Rising death toll
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched a retaliatory offensive that has so far killed at least 34,789 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry said Tuesday.
Militants also took around 250 people hostage on October 7, of whom Israel estimates 128 remain in Gaza, including 36 who are believed to be dead.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel might “deepen” its Gaza operation if negotiations failed to bring the hostages home.
“This operation will continue until we eliminate Hamas in the Rafah area and the entire Gaza Strip, or until the first hostage returns,” he said in a statement.
Egypt and Qatar have taken the lead in the truce talks, with Hamas saying Monday it had told officials from both countries of its “approval of their proposal regarding a ceasefire.”
Hamas member Khalil Al-Hayya told the Qatar-based Al Jazeera news channel that the proposal involved a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the return of Palestinians displaced by the war and a hostage-prisoner exchange, with the goal of a “permanent ceasefire.”
Netanyahu’s office called the proposal “far from Israel’s essential demands,” but said the government would still send negotiators to Cairo.
International alarm has been building about the consequences of an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah, where the United Nations says 1.4 million people are sheltering.
But Netanyahu had repeatedly vowed to send in ground troops regardless of any truce, saying Israel needs to root out remaining Hamas forces.
Aid groups have warned that the coastal “humanitarian area” of Al-Muwasi — where Israel’s military told people to go before it launched its Rafah operation — is unprepared to handle the influx.
Scenes from Israel and Gaza reflect dashed hopes as imminent ceasefire seems unlikely
- Israel has killed more than 34,700 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry
- Hundreds of thousands in Gaza have been displaced, many sheltering in nylon tents in Gaza’s south, as “a full-blown famine” develops in the north of the enclave, according to the United Nations
JERUSALEM: An announcement by Hamas late Monday that it had accepted a ceasefire proposal sent people in the streets of Rafah into temporary jubilation, as Palestinian evacuees in the jam-packed town felt their first glimmer of hope the war could end.
For families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, the announcement raised the possibility that their long wait was coming to an end — that they might soon see their loved ones.
But the fervor was short-lived.
A few hours after Hamas’ announcement, Israel rejected the proposal — which was different from one the two sides had been discussing for days — and said it was sending a team of negotiators for a new round of talks.
By Tuesday morning, Israeli tanks had rolled into Rafah, cementing the dashed hopes among Israelis and Palestinians of any imminent ceasefire.
In Rafah, disillusioned Palestinians spent Tuesday packing up their belongings and preparing to evacuate.
Families of Israeli hostages were incensed, too, and thousands of protesters demonstrated late into the night across the country.
GAZA: PALESTINIANS EVACUATE, CONDEMN COLLAPSE OF DEAL
Across Gaza, Palestinians have been demanding a ceasefire for months, hoping that a stop to the fighting will bring an end to the suffering.
Over 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli fire and airstrikes since the war erupted on Oct. 7., according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. That day, Hamas militants killed about 1,200 in Israel and took around 250 hostages.
An estimated 100 hostages and the remains of 30 others are still held by Hamas, which insists it will not release them unless Israel ends the war and withdraws from Gaza.
Hundreds of thousands in Gaza have been displaced, many sheltering in nylon tents in Gaza’s south, as “a full-blown famine” develops in the north of the enclave, according to the United Nations.
So when the news came out that Hamas had accepted a ceasefire proposal put forward by Egypt and Qatar, Palestinians poured onto the streets, carrying children on their shoulders and banging pots and pans in excitement. For a moment, it seemed life would get easier.
But in the early hours of Tuesday, Israeli tanks entered the edge of Rafah and took control of one of the key border crossings between Israel and Gaza. Palestinians in the city loaded their belongings onto large trucks and fled.
“They kept giving us hope and telling us tomorrow, or after tomorrow, a truce will take place,” said Najwa Al-Siksik as drones buzzed over her tent camp. “As you can hear,” she said, “this was happening all night long.”
El-Sisik said she had lost all hope of an eventual deal.
“(Israel) doesn’t care about us or our children,” she said. “It only cares about its people. And (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu only cares about being at the top.”
Raef Abou Labde, who fled to Rafah from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis earlier in the war, rode atop a car packed with belongings, headed to what was sure to be yet another temporary refuge. Labde said he had little faith that Netanyahu’s far-right government sincerely wanted a ceasefire deal.
“I hope to God that the truce happens,” he said. “But what I see is that Netanyahu doesn’t want a ceasefire. He wants to displace the Palestinian people to Sinai, destroy Gaza and occupy it.”
ISRAEL: PROTESTS GROW, DEMANDING NEW DEAL NOW
In Israel, the Hamas announcement did not provoke the kind of immediate celebrations seen in Gaza. Many relatives of hostages held in Gaza, who have seen what feels like countless rounds of ceasefire negotiations end with no deal, have grown jaded.
“We won’t believe there’s a deal until we start to see some hostages return home,” said Michael Levy, whose 33-year-old brother, Or Levy, remains in captivity.
Still, the back and forth between Israel and Hamas led to boisterous and sustained protests Monday night. Protesters, led by hostage families, blocked the main highway into Tel Aviv, lighting fires on the road.
Demonstrations also broke out in Jerusalem, Haifa, and Beersheba.
Hostage families slammed the government’s inaction on a possible deal in a hearing at Israel’s parliament Tuesday.
“We see all sorts of explanations — this isn’t the deal that we gave them, Hamas changed it,” said Rotem Cooper, whose father Amiram Cooper was kidnapped Oct. 7. He questioned whether military pressure was an effective bargaining tactic to force Hamas to release additional hostages.
For some, the news indicated that a deal was closer than ever before.
Sharone Lifshitz, whose father, Oded, is a hostage, said she believed the differences between the proposal Hamas had accepted and Israel’s “core demands” were not so wide.
“Hamas are shrewd operators,” she said. “Now it’s going to be hard for Israel to just say ‘no.’”
Others said they hoped Israel’s movement into Rafah Tuesday was a tactic to pressure Hamas into a mutually agreeable deal.
“This is a way to show that Israel is serious about its demands,” said Levy. “Hamas can’t just declare they have agreed to a deal with changed terms.”
