Houthis vow to continue blocking Red Sea for Israeli ships

Armed men stand on the beach as the Galaxy Leader commercial ship, seized by the Houthis last month, lies anchored off the coast of Al-Salif, Yemen, Dec. 5, 2023. (Reuters)
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Updated 07 December 2023
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Houthis vow to continue blocking Red Sea for Israeli ships

  • Houthi Defense Minister Mohammed Nasser Al-Atefi said that the militia would continue to block the Red Sea to ships owned or operated by Israel
  • US envoy discusses militia threats to international commercial traffic and peace efforts with key Yemen official

AL-MUKALLA: The Houthis have threatened again to launch missile and drone strikes against Israeli ships traversing the Red Sea as well as Israel itself, amid mounting international pressure on the Yemeni militia. 

Houthi Defense Minister Mohammed Nasser Al-Atefi said on Wednesday that the militia would continue to block the Red Sea for ships owned or operated by Israel and would fire ballistic missiles and drones at Israel, defying international calls for the militia to stop threatening maritime navigation in the Red Sea.

“In support of our people in Gaza, the navy, missile, and drone forces are ready to conduct the toughest individual and collective attacks on fixed or moving targets in Israel,” Al-Atefi said while addressing a group of military and security officers, as well as media, aboard the seized cargo ship Galaxy Leader.

Al-Atefi’s warnings came as the militia’s military declared the firing of a number of ballistic missiles targeting military sites in Eilat, south of Israel.

Since the beginning of this month, the Houthis have fired drones and ballistic missiles toward Israel and commercial ships in the Red Sea in response to Israel’s assault in Gaza.

Several drones and missiles were intercepted over the Red Sea by US Navy ships. 

The Houthis seized the Israeli-linked cargo ship Galaxy Leader from the Red Sea on Nov. 19 and diverted it to the shore of Yemen’s Hodeidah. 

The militia transformed the seized ship into a tourist attraction, allowing visitors to board for 500 Yemeni riyals (almost a dollar in Houthi cities).

People were seen wandering around the ship, dancing in groups, and chewing the hobby qat leaves, according to social media influencers.

Images on social media showed tiny boats transporting passengers from Hodeidah’s shoreline to the ship.

Others were spotted snapping pictures and waving Palestinian and Yemeni flags.

The slogans of the Houthis were displayed on the ship.

“The ship is available to everybody for 500 riyals. Life is great here since one may chew (qat), alter his mood, smoke shisha, and even earn a livelihood,” Mustafa Al-Maouri, a Yemeni online influencer who was kidnapped by the Houthis and placed on trial earlier this year, said on the ship’s top deck.

Meanwhile, Tim Lenderking, US Yemen envoy, met with Aidarous Al-Zubeidi, deputy president of Yemen’s Presidential Transitional Council, in Dubai on Thursday to discuss Houthi threats to international commercial traffic in the Red Sea and peace efforts to end the conflict in Yemen.

“We discussed the urgent maritime security concerns and challenges in the Red Sea and Bab Al-Mandab considering the recent escalation by the Houthis and reviewed together the latest updates regarding the UN-led political peace process to end the war in #Yemen,” Al-Zubeidi said on the social media platform X.

The US Department of State said that Lenderking traveled to the region on Monday to push for a peaceful resolution to the Yemen crisis and to discuss with US partners measures to maintain the safety of international commerce.


Israel strikes car on Damascus airport road: state media

Updated 28 sec ago
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Israel strikes car on Damascus airport road: state media

  • An Israeli air strike hit a car on the Damascus airport road on Tuesday, causing it to explode
DAMASCUS: An Israeli air strike hit a car on the Damascus airport road on Tuesday, causing it to explode, Syria’s official news agency SANA reported.
“A car exploded after it was targeted in an Israeli aggression on the road to Damascus International Airport,” SANA reported, citing a police source, without saying who was targeted or if there were any casualties.

Hamas, Fatah agree on joint committee to run post-war Gaza

Updated 03 December 2024
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Hamas, Fatah agree on joint committee to run post-war Gaza

CAIRO: Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party have agreed to create a committee to jointly administer post-war Gaza, negotiators from both sides said Tuesday.
Under the plan, which needs Abbas’s approval, the committee would be composed of 10 to 15 non-partisan figures with authority on matters related to the economy, education, health, humanitarian aid and reconstruction, according to a draft of the proposal seen by AFP.


Iraqi armed group urges government to deploy troops to Syria

Updated 03 December 2024
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Iraqi armed group urges government to deploy troops to Syria

BAGHDAD: Iraq’s powerful Iran-aligned Kataeb Hezbollah armed group has called on Baghdad to send troops to Syria to support the Damascus government against a militant offensive.
Kataeb Hezbollah, or Hezbollah Brigades, made the appeal in a statement shared on pro-Iranian Telegram channels late Monday. Excerpts were also posted on its official website.
The militant offensive, led by Islamists, has seized the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, stirring concern in political and security circles in neighboring Iraq.
A spokesman for Kataeb Hezbollah, part of the Iran-backed “axis of resistance,” said the group had not yet decided to deploy its own fighters but urged Baghdad to act.
“We believe the Iraqi government should take the initiative to send regular military forces in coordination with the Syrian government, as these groups pose a threat to Iraq’s national security and the region,” the spokesman said.
Kataeb Hezbollah has previously fought in Syria alongside forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.
In Iraq, it is part of the Hashed Al-Shaabi, a coalition of former paramilitary forces now integrated into the regular armed forces.
This coalition, under the Iraqi prime minister’s command, denies involvement outside Iraq’s borders.
Iraq remains scarred by the rise of the Daesh group in 2014, which saw the extremists capture nearly a third of the country before being defeated in 2017.
On Monday, Iraq said it had sent armored vehicles to bolster security along its 600-kilometer (370-mile) border with Syria.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported the deployment of about 200 pro-Iranian Iraqi fighters in Syria’s Aleppo region to back government forces.


Syrian army and allied forces confront attack by SDF forces in Deir Al Zor, state news agency says

Updated 03 December 2024
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Syrian army and allied forces confront attack by SDF forces in Deir Al Zor, state news agency says

DUBAI: The Syrian army and allied forces confronted an attack launched by forces affiliated with the Syrian Democratic Forces alliance on villages in the northern countryside of Deir Al Zor province on Tuesday, state news agency (SANA) reported.
The SDF is a Kurdish-led alliance in north and east Syria which worked with the US-led coalition against Daesh. Spearheaded by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and including Arab fighters, it holds a quarter of Syria, including oil fields and areas where some 900 US troops are deployed.
Turkiye, Syria’s northern neighbor, considers the YPG and the SDF by extension to be “terrorist” groups.


They fled war in Sudan. But they haven’t been able to flee the hunger

Updated 03 December 2024
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They fled war in Sudan. But they haven’t been able to flee the hunger

  • Food in the markets is sparse, prices have spiked and aid groups say they struggle to reach the most vulnerable as warring parties limit access
  • Aid workers say funding is not enough

ADRE:For months, Aziza Abrahim fled from one village in Sudan to the next as people were slaughtered. Yet the killing of relatives and her husband’s disappearance aren’t what forced the 23-year-old to leave the country for good. It was hunger, she said.
“We don’t have anything to eat because of the war,” Abrahim said, cradling her 1-year-old daughter under the sheet where she now shelters, days after crossing into Chad.
The war in Sudan has created vast hunger, including famine. It has pushed people off their farms. Food in the markets is sparse, prices have spiked and aid groups say they’re struggling to reach the most vulnerable as warring parties limit access.
Some 24,000 people have been killed and millions displaced during the war that erupted in April 2023, sparked by tensions between the military and a powerful paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces. Global experts confirmed famine in the Zamzam displacement camp in July. They warn that some 25 million people — more than half of Sudan’s population — are expected to face acute hunger this year.
“People are starving to death at the moment ... It’s man-made. It’s these men with guns and power who deny women and children food,” Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told The Associated Press. Warring parties on both sides are blocking assistance and delaying authorization for aid groups, he said.
Between May and September, there were seven malnutrition-related deaths among children in one hospital at a displacement site in Chad run by Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF. Such deaths can be from disease in hunger-weakened bodies.
In September, MSF was forced to stop caring for 5,000 malnourished children in North Darfur for several weeks, citing repeated, deliberate obstructions and blockades. US President Joe Biden has called on both sides to allow unhindered access and stop killing civilians.
But the fighting shows no signs of slowing. More than 2,600 people were killed across the country in October, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, which called it the bloodiest month of the war.
Violence is intensifying around North Darfur’s capital, El Fasher, the only capital in the vast western Darfur region that the RSF doesn’t hold. Darfur has experienced some of the war’s worst atrocities, and the International Criminal Court prosecutor has said there are grounds to believe both sides may be committing war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide.
Abrahim escaped her village in West Darfur and sought refuge for more than a year in nearby towns with friends and relatives. Her husband had left home to find work before the war, and she hasn’t heard from him since.
She struggled to eat and feed their daughter. Unable to farm, she cut wood and sold it in Chad, traveling eight hours by donkey there and back every few days, earning enough to buy grain. But after a few months the wood ran out, forcing her to leave for good.
Others who have fled to Chad described food prices spiking three-fold and stocks dwindling in the market. There were no vegetables, just grains and nuts.
Awatif Adam came to Chad in October. Her husband wasn’t making enough transporting people with his donkey cart, and it was too risky to farm, she said. Her 6-year-old twin girls and 3-year-old son lost weight and were always hungry.
“My children were saying all the time, ‘Mom, give us food’,” she said. Their cries drove her to leave.
As more people stream into Chad, aid groups worry about supporting them.
Some 700,000 Sudanese have entered since the war began. Many live in squalid refugee camps or shelter at the border in makeshift displacement sites. And the number of arrivals at the Adre crossing between August and October jumped from 6,100 to 14,800, according to government and UN data., though it was not clear whether some people entered multiple times.
Earlier this year, the World Food Program cut rations by roughly half in Chad, citing a lack of funding.
While there’s now enough money to return to full rations until the start of next year, more arrivals will strain the system and more hunger will result if funding doesn’t keep pace, said Ramazani Karabaye, head of the World Food Program’s operations in Adre.
During an AP visit to Adre in October, some people who fled Sudan at the start of the war said they were still struggling.
Khadiga Omer Adam said she doesn’t have enough aid or money to eat regularly, which has complicated breastfeeding her already malnourished daughter, Salma Issa. The 35-year-old gave birth during the war’s initial days, delivering alone in West Darfur. It was too dangerous for a midwife to reach her.
Adam had clutched the baby as she fled through villages, begging for food. More than a year later, she sat on a hospital bed holding a bag of fluid above her daughter, who was fed through a tube in her nose.
“I have confidence in the doctors ... I believe she’ll improve, I don’t think she’ll die,” she said.
The MSF-run clinic in the Aboutengue camp admitted more than 340 cases of severely malnourished children in August and September. Staff fear that number could rise. The arid climate in Chad south of the Sahara Desert means it’s hard to farm, and there’s little food variety, health workers said.
People are fleeing Sudan into difficult conditions, said Dr. Oula Dramane Ouattara, head of MSF’s medical activities in the camp.
”If things go on like this, I’m afraid the situation will get out of control,” he said.