FRANKFURT: Top European airlines Lufthansa, KLM and Swiss on Tuesday announced that they were extending their suspension of flights to the Middle East, as tensions spiral throughout the region.
The moves come as Israel launched strikes on Beirut and a senior White House official warned that Iran was preparing to launch a ballistic missile attack “imminently” against Israel.
KLM has pushed out until the end of the year the suspension of its once-daily flight to Tel Aviv “given the situation in the region,” spokeswoman Elvira van der Vis told AFP.
The Dutch airline had already announced in August that it was suspending flights to Israel until October 26.
Also on Tuesday, German airline group Lufthansa said it was suspending flights to Beirut up to and including November 30.
Lufthansa group flights to Tel Aviv will be canceled until October 31 while trips to Tehran remain canceled until October 14.
“We regret the inconvenience caused to our passengers,” the group said.
Later on Tuesday the Lufthansa group said that it had also decided to “avoid Iranian, Iraqi and Jordanian airspace up to and including 2 October,” adding that “flights will continue to avoid Israeli airspace up to and including 31 October.”
The Lufthansa group — whose carriers also include Swiss International Air Lines, Austrian Airlines and Brussels Airlines — has repeatedly modified its flight schedule in recent months due to heightened tensions in the Middle East, as have other airlines.
Following the example of its parent company, Swiss said the extension of its flight suspensions was “intended to provide more predictability for both our passengers and our crews.”
The Israeli army said it had launched a ground offensive in Lebanon and that its forces engaged in clashes on Tuesday, further escalating the conflict after a week of intense air strikes that killed hundreds.
Meanwhile, a senior White House official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the United States has indications that Iran was preparing to launch a missile attack against Israel “imminently.”
“We are actively supporting defensive preparations to defend Israel against this attack,” the official said, warning that such an action would “carry severe consequences for Iran.”
European airlines extend suspension of Middle East flights
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European airlines extend suspension of Middle East flights
- The moves come as Israel launched strikes on Beirut and a senior White House official warned that Iran was preparing to launch a ballistic missile attack
- Also on Tuesday, German airline group Lufthansa said it was suspending flights to Beirut up to and including November 30
Houthi media says US-UK strikes hit 4 Yemen governorates
At least one strike hit Dhamar, south of the capital, and Mukayras, southeast of Sanaa
SANAA: Strikes by the United States and Britain targeted four rebel-run provinces in Yemen, including the capital Sanaa and the port city of Hodeida, according to the Houthi-run Al Masirah television network.
Al Masirah reported four strikes on Sanaa and seven on Hodeida, with AFP correspondents hearing loud explosions in both cities.
At least one strike hit Dhamar, south of the capital, and Mukayras, southeast of Sanaa, Al Masirah said.
There was no immediate comment from the United States or Britain and Al Masirah did not elaborate on any damage or casualties.
The US and Britain have repeatedly struck Houthi targets in Yemen since January in response to attacks by the rebels on shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
The rebels say the strikes, which have disrupted maritime traffic in a globally important waterway, target vessels linked to Israel and are intended to signal solidarity with Palestinians during the Gaza war.
Israel too has struck Yemen in response to Houthi attacks, with Israeli strikes on Hodeida last month killing at least five people after the rebels said they targeted Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport with a missile.
The latest strikes came a day after the rebels said they carried out a drone attack on Tel Aviv. The Israeli military said it intercepted “a suspicious aerial target” off central Israel overnight, without giving further details.
On Wednesday, the Houthis said they had fired cruise missiles at Israel, following Iran’s mass bombardment of the country the night before.
The day before, the Houthis damaged two ships in separate attacks off Yemen’s coast.
One ship was hit by a marine drone, puncturing a ballast tank, while a second vessel was damaged by a missile less than three hours later, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said.
The Houthis, who have controlled large swathes of war-torn Yemen for a decade, are part of Iran’s “axis of resistance” against Israel and the United States.
The latest strikes came as thousands took to the streets of the capital Sanaa to express solidarity with Palestinians and Lebanese amid attacks by Israel.
“The aggression on the capital and Yemeni governorates after the...solidarity marches with Lebanon and Gaza is a desperate attempt to terrorize our people,” Houthi official Hashem Sharaf Al-Din told Al Masirah.
“Yemen will not be deterred by these attacks and will continue its steadfastness in confronting the enemies with all its strength.”
Erdogan lashes out at Israel for attack on UN chief
- Israel “is shamelessly challenging UN Secretary-General Guterres,” Erdogan said
- “196 countries in the world will stand by the UN secretary-general” against Israel
ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday accused Israel of “shamelessly” attacking UN chief Antonio Guterres by declaring him “persona non grata” for not quickly condemning Iran’s ballistic missile barrage.
Israel “is shamelessly challenging UN Secretary-General Guterres,” Erdogan told an audience at a defense technology fair in the southern province of Adana.
He added that “196 countries in the world will stand by the UN secretary-general” against Israel.
Relations between the UN and Israel have been difficult since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the Gaza war.
On Wednesday, Guterres was declared persona non grata by Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, accusing him of failing to specifically condemn Iran’s missile attack on the country this week. Katz called Guterres an “anti-Israel secretary-general who lends support to terrorists, rapists, and murderers.”
“Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel does not deserve to step foot on Israeli soil,” Katz said in a statement.
Guterres pointedly condemned Iran’s attack at a UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday.
The Security Council on Thursday offered its full support to Guterres.
Without naming Israel, the council’s five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — and 10 non-permanent members “underscored the need for all member states to have a productive and effective relationship with the secretary-general.”
US arranges flights to bring Americans out of Lebanon as others seek escape
- Some officials and community leaders in Michigan, home to the nation’s largest concentration of Arab Americans, are calling on the US to start an evacuation
- Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said: “The US military is, of course, on the ready and has a whole wide range of plans”
WASHINGTON: US-arranged flights have brought about 350 Americans and their immediate relatives out of Lebanon this week during escalated fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, while thousands of others still there face airstrikes and diminishing commercial flights.
In Washington, senior State Department and White House officials met Thursday with two top Arab American officials to discuss US efforts to help American citizens leave Lebanon. The two leaders also separately met with officials from the Department of Homeland Security.
Michigan state Rep. Alabas Farhat and Abed Ayoub, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, used the White House meeting to “really drive home a lot of important points about the issues our community members are facing on the ground and a lot of the logistical problems that they’re encountering with it when it comes to this evacuation,” Ayoub said.
Some officials and community leaders in Michigan, home to the nation’s largest concentration of Arab Americans, are calling on the US to start an evacuation. Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said that was not being considered right now.
“The US military is, of course, on the ready and has a whole wide range of plans. Should we need to evacuate American citizens out of Lebanon, we absolutely can,” Singh told reporters.
Israel has opened a pounding air campaign deep into Lebanon and a ground incursion in the country’s south targeting the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group. Iran on Tuesday fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles toward Israel, leaving the region bracing for any Israeli retaliation and fearing an all-out regional war.
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since the day after Hamas, another Iranian-backed militant group, attacked Israel on Oct. 7, triggering the war in Gaza.
Other countries, from Greece to the United Kingdom, Japan and Colombia, have arranged flights or sent military planes to ferry out their citizens.
As Israeli bombardments targeting senior Hezbollah leaders shook southern neighborhoods in Lebanon’s capital last week, “We could still see, hear and feel everything” despite fleeing to the mountains outside Beirut, said Nicolette Hutcherson, a longtime humanitarian volunteer living in Lebanon with her husband and three children.
The only seats Hutcherson’s family could find on commercial carriers were for flights weeks away and for thousands of dollars, she said. Ultimately, Hutcherson and her young children joined crowds heading to Lebanon’s Mediterranean marinas, finding spots on pleasure boats turned evacuation ships for the nine-hour ride to Cyprus.
Her husband was able to find a single seat out on a plane days later to join them.
Another American family was mourning Kamel Ahmad Jawad, a resident of metro Detroit’s Dearborn area, who was killed in southern Lebanon on Tuesday. Family members said he stayed to help civilians too old, infirm or poor to flee.
He had been on the phone with his daughter Tuesday when the impact of a strike knocked him off his feet, his daughter, Nadine Kamel Jawad, said in a statement.
“He simply got up, found his phone, and told me he needed to finish praying in case another strike hit him,” she said.
The State Department has been telling Americans for almost a year not to travel to Lebanon and advising them to leave the country on commercial flights for months. It also has made clear that government-run evacuations are rare, while offering emergency loans to aid travel out of Lebanon.
Some Americans said relatives who are US citizens or green-card holders have been struggling for days or weeks to get seats on flights out of Lebanon. Limits on withdrawing money from banks due to Lebanon’s longstanding economic collapse and intermittent electricity and Internet have made it difficult, they said.
Rebecca Abou-Chedid, a lawyer based in Washington, paid $5,000 to get a female relative on the last seat of a flight out of Beirut on Saturday.
“She was on her way to the airport” when Israeli began one of its first days of intensified bombing, Abou-Chedid said.
By Thursday, some Americans said their loved ones had been able to secure tickets for upcoming flights and were hopeful.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the US would continue to organize flights as long the security situation in Lebanon is dire and there is demand.
Miller said Lebanon’s flag carrier, Middle East Airlines, also had set aside about 1,400 seats on flights for Americans over the past week. Several hundred had taken them, he said.
Miller could not speak to the cost of the airline’s flights, over which the US government has no regulatory oversight, but said the maximum fare that would be charged for a US-organized contract flight would be $283 per person.
More than 6,000 American citizens have contacted the US Embassy in Beirut seeking information about departing the country over the past week.
Not all of those have actually sought assistance in leaving, and Miller said the department understood that some Americans, many of them dual US-Lebanese nationals and longtime residents of the country, may choose to stay.
Miller said the embassy is prepared to offer temporary loans to Americans who choose to remain in Lebanon but want to relocate to a potentially safer area of the country. The embassy also would provide emergency loans to Americans who wish to leave on the US-contracted flights.
Israeli bombardment kills 29 people in Gaza, militants renew rocket fire into Israel
- The new rocket salvoes indicated that Hamas-led militant factions in Gaza are still able to fire projectiles into Israel
CAIRO: Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 29 Palestinians on Friday, medics said, and sirens blared in southern Israel in response to renewed rocket fire from militants in the Palestinian enclave.
The new rocket salvoes indicated that Hamas-led militant factions in Gaza are still able to fire projectiles into Israel despite a year-long Israeli aerial and ground offensive that has turned wide areas of the enclave into wasteland.
On Friday, the Israeli military said sirens sounded in southern Israel for the first time in around two months.
“Almost a year after Oct. 7, Hamas is still threatening our civilians with their terrorism and we will continue operating against them,” it added, referring to the anniversary of Hamas’ cross-border attack that touched off the Gaza war.
Dramatic footage shows moment oil tanker struck by Houthi drone
- Group releases video of explosion engulfing Cordelia Moon as it passed through Red Sea
- Houthis have threatened to ‘escalate military operations’ after Israeli air raids last week
LONDON: Footage has been released of an oil tanker being struck by a Houthi drone vessel in the Red Sea.
The group published a video appearing to show the unmanned boat colliding with the Panama-flagged Cordelia Moon on Tuesday.
In the footage, a large explosion is seen on the vessel’s port side, followed by a plume of smoke engulfing the tanker. Its crew reported no major injuries and that all aboard are safe.
The attack reportedly occurred about 70 miles (110 km) off the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah, which is controlled by the militia.
The Houthis later claimed responsibility for the attack, which it said involved eight ballistic and winged missiles, a drone and an unmanned boat.
The US Navy said that the captain of a nearby vessel reported seeing four “splashes” in the water around the Cordelia Moon, believed to have been caused by missiles launched at the tanker missing their target.
Though the Houthis described the Cordelia Moon as a British ship, it is managed by an Indian company called Margao Marine Solutions.
Meanwhile, British security firm Amber reported that a second vessel, sailing under the Liberian flag, was struck by a missile about 97 nautical miles northwest of Hodeidah later that day as it traveled toward the Suez Canal. Its crew also reported no major injuries and that all aboard are safe.
The two attacks represent a return to the targeting of commercial shipping by the Houthis after a brief hiatus in operations.
The group began attacking vessels in the region following Israel’s invasion of Gaza last year.
The Houthis have also launched drone and missile attacks against Israel since the start of hostilities, and on Monday threatened to “escalate military operations” after shooting down a US military drone as it flew over Yemen. That incident followed a series of Israeli air raids over Houthi-occupied Yemen last week, which hit a number of military and oil installations.