DUBAI: Three suspected attacks by Yemen’s Houthi militants targeted a ship in the strategic Bab El-Mandeb Strait linking the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea, including one that saw private security guards shoot and destroy a bomb-loaded drone boat, authorities said Friday.
The Houthis did not immediately claim the assaults, though they follow a monthslong campaign by the militants targeting shipping through the Red Sea corridor over Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
After a recent two-week pause, their attacks resumed following the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran, amid concerns of a wider regional war. Iran backs the Houthis as part of what it calls a regional “Axis of Resistance.”
“The operations are ongoing — our operations toward occupied Palestine to target the Israeli enemy, our operations at sea, the inevitable forthcoming response, as well as coordination with the axis in any joint operations,” warned the Houthi’s secretive leader, Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, in a speech Thursday. “The decision to respond is a collective decision, at the level of the entire axis and at the level of each front individually.”
In the first attack, a rocket-propelled grenade exploded close to the ship Thursday, according to the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center. Two smaller craft, with men aboard wearing white and yellow raincoats, launched the RPG, the UKMTO said.
The second attack came early Friday, with a missile “exploding in close proximity to the vessel,” the UKMTO said. “The vessel and crew are reported to be safe.”
The private security firm Ambrey reported that the ship was hit by a drone that caused no injuries or physical damage.
“The vessel was assessed to be aligned with the Houthi target profile,” Ambrey said. “The vessel was assessed to have been targeted earlier in the day.”
Then came the third attack with the drone boat, where private security guards on board “opened fire and (were) able to successfully destroy the vehicle,” Ambrey said.
Though the Houthis did not immediately claim the attack, it sometimes can take hours or even days to acknowledge their assaults. They’ve also claimed others that apparently haven’t happened.
The Houthis have targeted more than 70 vessels with missiles and drones in a campaign that has killed four sailors since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. They have seized one vessel and sunk two in the time since. Other missiles and drones have been either intercepted by a US-led coalition in the Red Sea or splashed down before reaching their targets.
The militants maintain that their attacks target ships linked to Israel, the United States or Britain as part of a campaign they say seeks to force an end to the war. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the war, including some bound for Iran.
Since November, Houthi attacks have disrupted the $1 trillion of goods that flow annually through the region, while also sparking the most intense combat the US Navy has seen since World War II.
The Houthis also have launched drones and missiles toward Israel, including an attack on July 19 that killed one person and wounded 10 others in Tel Aviv. Israel responded the next day with airstrikes on the Houthi-held port city of Hodeida that hit fuel depots and electrical stations, killing and wounding a number of people, the militants say.
After the strikes, the Houthis paused their attacks until Saturday, when they hit a Liberian-flagged container ship traveling through the Gulf of Aden.
Meanwhile on Thursday, US Air Force F-22 Raptor fighter jets arrived in the Mideast from a base in the United Kingdom, authorities said Thursday.
US Central Command posted images online of the fighters, saying their presence in the region was “to address threats posed by Iran and Iranian-backed groups.”
The US has declined to say where the aircraft landed due to host nation sensitivities.
Central Command later said it destroyed two Houthi anti-ship cruise missiles and one Houthi ground control station, as well as a drone boat in the Red Sea.
Three suspected Houthi attacks target a ship off Yemen, authorities say
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Three suspected Houthi attacks target a ship off Yemen, authorities say
- The Houthis did not immediately claim the assaults, though they follow a monthslong campaign by the rebels targeting shipping through the Red Sea corridor
Trump says Fed’s rate cut was ‘political move’
WASHINGTON: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Thursday the US Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates by half of a percentage point was “a political move.”
“It really is a political move. Most people thought it was going to be half of that number, which probably would have been the right thing to do,” Trump said in an interview with Newsmax.
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday kicked off what is expected to be a series of interest rate cuts with an unusually large half-percentage-point reduction.
Trump said last month that US presidents should have a say over decisions made by the Federal Reserve.
The Fed chair and the other six members of its board of governors are nominated by the president, subject to confirmation by the Senate. The Fed enjoys substantial operational independence to make policy decisions that wield tremendous influence over the direction of the world’s largest economy and global asset markets.
Gaza ceasefire deal unlikely in Biden’s term, WSJ reports
WASHINGTON: US officials now believe that a ceasefire deal between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza is unlikely before President Joe Biden leaves office in January, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
The newspaper cited top-level officials in the White House, State Department and Pentagon without naming them. Those bodies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“I can tell you that we do not believe that deal is falling apart,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters on Thursday before the report was published.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said two weeks ago that 90 percent of a ceasefire deal had been agreed upon.
The United States and mediators Qatar and Egypt have for months attempted to secure a ceasefire but have failed to bring Israel and Hamas to a final agreement.
Two obstacles have been especially difficult: Israel’s demand to keep forces in the Philadelphi corridor between Gaza and Egypt and the specifics of an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
The United States has said a Gaza ceasefire deal could lower tensions across the Middle East amid fears the conflict could widen.
Biden laid out a three-phase ceasefire proposal on May 31 that he said at the time Israel agreed to. As the talks hit obstacles, officials have for weeks said a new proposal would soon be presented.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has killed over 41,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies.
Macron says ‘diplomatic path exists’ in Lebanon
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that a “diplomatic path exists” in Lebanon, where fears of an all-out war between Hezbollah and Israel spiked after deadly explosions of hand-held devices.
War is “not inevitable” and “nothing, no regional adventure, no private interest, no loyalty to any cause merits triggering a conflict in Lebanon,” Macron said in a video to the Lebanese people posted on social media.
Sweden charges woman with genocide, crimes against humanity in Syria
- Daesh ‘tried to annihilate the Yazidi ethnic group on an industrial scale,’ prosecutor Reena Devgun says
DENMARK: Swedish authorities have charged a 52-year-old woman associated with the Daesh group with genocide, crimes against humanity, and serious war crimes against Yazidi women and children in Syria — in the first such case of a person to be tried in the Scandinavian country.
Lina Laina Ishaq, who’s a Swedish citizen, allegedly committed the crimes from August 2014 to December 2016 in Raqqa, the former de facto capital of the self-proclaimed Daesh caliphate and home to about 300,000 people.
The crimes “took place under Daesh rule in Raqqa, and this is the first time that Daesh attacks against the Yazidi minority have been tried in Sweden,” senior prosecutor Reena Devgun said in a statement.
“Women, children, and men were regarded as property and subjected to being traded as slaves, sexual slavery, forced labor, deprivation of liberty, and extrajudicial executions,” Devgun said.
When announcing the charges, Devgun said that they were able to identify the woman through information from UNITAD, the UN team investigating atrocities in Iraq.
Daesh “tried to annihilate the Yazidi ethnic group on an industrial scale,” Devgun said.
In a separate statement, the Stockholm District Court said the prosecutor claims the woman detained a number of women and children belonging to the Yazidi ethnic group in her residence in Raqqa and “allegedly exposed them to, among other things, severe suffering, torture or other inhumane treatment as well as for persecution by depriving them of fundamental rights for cultural, religious and gender reasons contrary to general international law.”
According to the charge sheet, Ishaq is suspected of holding nine people, including children, in her Raqqa home for up to seven months and treating them as slaves. She also abused several of those she held captive.
The charge sheet said that Ishaq, who denies wrongdoing, is accused of having molested a baby, said to have been one month old at the time, by holding a hand over the child’s mouth when he screamed to make him shut up.
She is also suspected of having sold people to Daesh, knowing they risked being killed or subjected to serious sexual abuse.
In 2014, Daesh stormed Yazidi towns and villages in Iraq’s Sinjar region and abducted women and children. Women were forced into sexual slavery, and boys were taken to be indoctrinated in jihadi ideology.
The woman earlier had been convicted in Sweden and was sentenced to three years in prison for taking her 2-year-old son to Syria in 2014, an area that Daesh then controlled.
The woman claimed she had told the child’s father that she and the boy were only going on holiday to Turkiye. However, once in Turkiye, the two crossed into Syria and the Daesh-run territory.
In 2017, when Daesh’s reign began to collapse, she fled from Raqqa and was captured by Syrian Kurdish troops. She managed to escape to Turkiye, where she was arrested with her son and two other children she had given birth to in the meantime, with a Daesh foreign fighter from Tunisia.
She was extradited from Turkiye to Sweden.
Before her 2021 conviction, the woman lived in the southern town of Landskrona.
The court said the trial was planned to start Oct. 7 and last approximately two months.
Large parts of the trial are to be held behind closed doors.
Israel violated global child rights treaty in Gaza, UN committee says
GENEVA: A UN committee has accused Israel of severe breaches of a global treaty protecting children’s rights, saying its military actions in Gaza had a catastrophic impact on them and are among the worst violations in recent history.
Palestinian health authorities say 41,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its military campaign in response to cross-border attacks by Hamas on Oct. 7. Of those killed in Gaza, at least 11,355 are children, Palestinian data shows, and thousands more are injured.
“The outrageous death of children is almost historically unique. This is an extremely dark place in history,” said Bragi Gudbrandsson, vice chair of the Committee.
“I don’t think we have seen a violation that is so massive before as we’ve seen in Gaza. These are extremely grave violations that we do not often see,” he said.
Israel, which ratified the treaty in 1991, sent a large delegation to the UN hearings in Geneva between September 3-4.
They argued that the treaty did not apply in Gaza or the West Bank and that it was committed to respecting international humanitarian law. It says its military campaign in Gaza is aimed at eliminating Hamas.
The committee praised Israel for attending but said it “deeply regrets the state party’s repeated denial of its legal obligations.”
The 18-member UN Committee monitors countries’ compliance with the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child — a widely adopted treaty that protects them from violence and other abuses.
In its conclusions, it called on Israel to provide urgent assistance to thousands of children maimed or injured by the war, provide support for orphans, and allow more medical evacuations from Gaza.
The UN body has no means of enforcing its recommendations, although countries generally aim to comply.
During the hearings, the UN experts also asked many questions about Israeli children, including details about those taken hostage by Hamas, to which Israel’s delegation gave extensive responses.
