How effective are the US strikes on the Houthis?

The location was given as “somewhere over the US Central Command area of responsibility.” (US Central Command)
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Updated 18 March 2025
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How effective are the US strikes on the Houthis?

  • Fate of militia’s leaders unknown as health ministry blames US campaign for deaths of scores of people, including women and children
  • Prospect of prolonged campaign raises questions of cost, Israeli role and US ability to weaken Houthi defenses and eliminate key leaders

LONDON: Few took notice of a five-minute video posted on YouTube on Friday by Media Magik Entertainment, an American “veteran-owned company” that regularly uploads public-relations footage shot by the US military.

The short film, which by the weekend had attracted only a few hundred views, showed a flight of four US Navy F/A-18 fighter jets, assigned to the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, refueling in the air above a semi-mountainous desert landscape.

The location was given as “somewhere over the US Central Command area of responsibility.” CENTCOM’s area includes the Red Sea, Arabian Gulf and the entire Middle East.

The footage ended with an on-screen message from CENTCOM. The carrier strike group, it read, “is ready … to execute the full spectrum of carrier operations essential to US national security, including the defense of the US and partner forces … and freedom of navigation to ensure maritime security and stability.”




CENTCOM said that the strikes, which so far had hit radar sites, missile defenses and missile and drone systems, could last for days. (AFP)

At that moment the nuclear-powered Nimitz-class Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier was at the northern end of the Red Sea, having passed through the Suez Canal in December.

The following day millions around the world watched footage of some of those same aircraft taking off from the carrier, bound for targets in Yemen as part of a package of strikes aimed at the Houthis, formally designated by the US as a foreign terrorist organization on March 4.

The video released by the US military — of fighters taking off from the aircraft carrier, missiles launching from ships and the black-and-white drone-shot footage of missiles striking targets marked by crosshairs — was eerily reminiscent of the nightly news footage that was seen throughout the “shock and awe” phase of the US-led invasion of Iraq over 20 years ago.

On Truth Social, his social media platform, President Trump announced he had ordered the US military “to launch decisive and powerful military action against the Houthi terrorists in Yemen,” who had “waged an unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence, and terrorism against American, and other, ships, aircraft, and drones.”

CENTCOM said that the strikes, which so far had hit radar sites, missile defenses and missile and drone systems, could last for days and, depending on the Houthi response, could “intensify in scope and scale.”

Targets on the first day of strikes included a building in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, described as a Houthi stronghold; a power station in the town of Dahyan, close to the northern city of Saada; and military sites in the southern city of Taiz.

Strikes continued throughout the weekend and into Monday, concentrating on targets in Al-Jawf governorate, adjacent to Saudi Arabia’s southern border with Yemen, and in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah.




Strikes continued throughout the weekend and into Monday. (Google Earth)

“CENTCOM has shifted from the mission as a ‘defensive operation’ for protecting international shipping to a large-scale operation,” Hisham Mgdashi, a Yemeni military and security analyst, said in an assessment of the US military attacks on X.

“The latest strikes targeted entirely new locations that had not been previously hit. Hitting Al-Jarraf is strategically comparable to striking Dahiyeh in Beirut. The continued waves of operations suggest that a pre-planned target list is being systematically executed.”

In a post on X on Monday morning, Houthi health ministry spokesman Anis Al-Asbahi said that the US strikes had so far killed 53 people, including “five children and two women,” and wounded 98 others. As yet there is no confirmation of US claims that “key Houthi figures” were targeted and have been killed.

The Houthis had actually paused their attacks on shipping in January but appeared poised to resume them. On March 7 Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, the group’s leader, released a statement on X, saying he was giving the mediators of the Gaza peace process “a four-day deadline. If the Israeli enemy continues to withhold humanitarian aid from the Gaza Strip, we will resume our naval operations against them. We will respond to the siege with a siege in the Red Sea.”

Al-Houthi’s whereabouts are currently unknown. Five days ago, a source within the Houthi militia told Newsweek magazine that it was “proceeding with extreme caution” to protect its leadership, “but at the same time, we are highly prepared to make sacrifices and cannot back down.”




It is quite possible that the Houthis have a sufficiently large and well distributed arsenal to resume and keep up their attacks on shipping for some time. (Ansarullah Media Centre/AFP)

It is not known if Al-Houthi is on the American hit list, but Israel has already made clear its eagerness to see him killed. In December Energy Minister Eli Cohen told an Israeli radio station: “I’m sending a message to the Houthi leader that if he continues with his actions, he will end up exactly like (Hamas leader) Sinwar and (Hezbollah Secretary-General) Nasrallah.” Both Sinwar and Nasrallah were killed in separate attacks last year by Israeli forces.

It is also unclear whether Israel will join the US assault on the Houthis, but in the recent past it has attacked Yemen unilaterally, its aircraft hitting port facilities in September in response to missile attacks on Israel from Yemen.

The Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping began after the Hamas assault on Israel in October 2023. Since then, Trump said, the last American warship to pass through the Red Sea “was attacked by the Houthis over a dozen times.”

In November 2024, the Biden administration had authorized a series of airstrikes “against multiple Houthi weapons storage facilities (which) housed a variety of advanced conventional weapons used by the Iran-backed Houthis to target US and international military and civilian vessels navigating international waters in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.”

FASTFACTS

• Iran-backed Houthis descended from Saada to seize most of north Yemen, including Sanaa, in 2014. 

• Yemen’s UN-recognized government, backed by a coalition, has been fighting the militia since then. 

• The conflict has left 150,000+ dead and thousands more wounded, both combatants and civilians. 

• Yemen’s govt. ‘monitored and documented’ 1,985 violations committed by the Houthis during 2024.


But this response, Trump wrote on Truth Social at the weekend, had been “pathetically weak.” Now, by contrast, “we will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective.”

Resorting to his trademark capitals for emphasis, Trump added: “To all Houthi terrorists, YOUR TIME IS UP, AND YOUR ATTACKS MUST STOP, STARTING TODAY. IF THEY DON’T, HELL WILL RAIN DOWN UPON YOU LIKE NOTHING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN BEFORE!”

That seems highly possible, given the predictable response from the Houthis: “The American aggression on Yemen,” they said in a statement, “is a criminal escalation that will not break the resolve of the Yemeni people and will only increase their determination to support Gaza and the resistance.”




President Donald Trump looks on as military strikes are launched against the Houthis. (White House)

On Monday, the Houthis claimed to have launched two attacks against the US carrier group in the Red Sea over the weekend. An anonymous US official cited by some media reports confirmed the carrier and other ships had been targeted by 11 drones, all of which had been shot down, and a missile that fell into the sea. No US ships were hit.

“The idea that you’re going to do this massive wave of airstrikes and the Houthis are just going to lie on their backs and take it is absurd,” Mohammad Albasha, founder of Basha Report, a US-based Middle East security advisory, told the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. “They’re going to retaliate and retaliate severely. It’s going to be a vicious cycle.”

Regardless of the scale of any Houthi response, analysts say the US military strikes look like the beginning of a sustained campaign that could last for weeks regardless of how high the final bill for the Pentagon. “The minute the Houthis say, ‘We’ll stop shooting at your ships, we’ll stop shooting at your drones,’ this campaign will end. But until then, it will be unrelenting,” Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, told Fox News, describing freedom of navigation as “a core national interest.”

The Houthi attacks on shipping have been cripplingly effective. According to a statement released by the White House on Saturday, since November 2023, when the Houthis seized the M/V Galaxy Leader and began to attack commercial shipping with anti-ship missiles and uncrewed aerial vehicles, they have attacked US warships more than 174 times and commercial vessels 145 times.

As a result, the number of merchant ships passing through the Red Sea has more than halved from 25,000 a year to about 10,000, having “a sustained negative effect on global trade and the economic security of the United States.”




The Houthis had actually paused their attacks on shipping in January but appeared poised to resume them. (AFP)

An estimated 75 percent of US- and UK-affiliated vessels now reroute around Africa instead of risking a transit of the Red Sea. Traveling via the Cape of Good Hope instead of the Red Sea and Suez Canal adds an average of 10 days to voyages to Europe from the Middle East or Far East, with an estimated additional fuel cost of $1 million for each trip.

That factor alone, claims the White House, was responsible for increasing global consumer goods inflation between 0.6 and 0.7 percent in 2024.

The Trump administration is signaling that the attacks on the Houthis, while designed to end their attacks on Red Sea shipping, are also a warning shot aimed at Tehran.

“Support for the Houthi terrorists must end IMMEDIATELY,” Trump warned Iran. If not, “BEWARE, because America will hold you fully accountable and, we won’t be nice about it!”

Shortly after, in an interview with ABC, Mike Waltz, White House national security adviser, delivered a heavy hint that direct action against Iran was now being considered by the administration.

“All options are always on the table with the president, but Iran needs to hear him loud and clear,” he said.




A US F/A-18 fighter aircraft preparing for take off. (CENTCOM)

“It is completely unacceptable, and it will be stopped, the level of support that they have been providing the Houthis, just like they have Hezbollah, the militias in Iraq, Hamas and others.

“The previous administration had a series of feckless responses. President Trump is coming in with overwhelming force (and) we will hold not only the Houthis accountable but we’re going to hold Iran, their backers, accountable as well.”

That accountability also extends to concerns about Iran’s nuclear program. On March 7 Trump said at the White House that Iran would not be allowed to have nuclear weapons.

“We are at final moments with Iran,” he said. “Something’s going to happen very soon. There’ll be some interesting days ahead, that’s all I can tell you. You know, we’re down to final strokes with Iran.”

He had, he said, sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, “saying, I hope you're going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it's going to be a terrible thing for them.”

Tehran’s UN mission later said that no such letter had been received.

Speaking on ABC News on Saturday, Stephen Ganyard, a military analyst and retired US Marine Corps colonel, said the “intended audience” of the weekend attacks “was Iran. The Trump administration has made it clear that they want the Iranians to negotiate an end to their nuclear program, and if they don’t there could be military action like we saw tonight, directly against Iran.”




It is not known if Houthi leader Abdul Malik Al- Houthi is on the US hit list. (X)

Meanwhile, although US forces are obviously capable of identifying and hitting targets with pinpoint accuracy, it is quite possible that the Houthis have a sufficiently large and well distributed arsenal to resume and keep up their attacks on shipping for some time.

“The Houthis have been able to maintain their pressure campaign despite efforts from the US, EU and the international community to restrain attacks,” Caroline Rose, director of the Strategic Blind Spots Portfolio at the New Lines Institute, told Arab News by email. “While Iran’s proxy network in the Levant has largely become dislodged — between Hezbollah’s decline in Lebanon, the departure of the Assad regime in Syria, and a decline of militia influence in Iraq — it’s likely that Iran has channeled its attention and resources toward the Houthis, given their effectiveness in launching strikes against commercial maritime vessels and military assets as an extension of the conflict in Gaza.”


According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, over the past few years “the Houthis have amassed a remarkably diverse array of anti-ship weaponry”. In a research paper published in December the IISS concluded that the Houthis possessed at least six different types of ballistic anti-ship missile, with ranges from between less than 200 and up to 1,300 km, “all of which either originate from Iran or are based on Iranian technology.”

In addition, when the Houthis seized control in northern Yemen in 2014-15, “they inherited a number of older Soviet and Chinese anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs) from Yemen’s pre-war navy,” and since then had been receiving regular shipments of Iranian ASCMs.

Other weapons the Houthis have deployed against shipping include Sammad drones, also of Iranian origin, which are used both to identify and, carrying an 18kg warhead, to strike targets, and fast, remotely controlled unmanned boats packed with explosives. This type of surface weapon was first used in 2017 in an attack on the Saudi frigate Al-Madinah, which killed two of the crew, and has been deployed against Red Sea shipping over the past year.

The size of the Houthis’ anti-ship arsenal is not known. What is clear, however, according to IISS, is that “the international arms embargo that has been in place against the Houthis since 2015 has demonstrably failed to prevent them from obtaining increasingly advanced weapons from Iran and other sources.”




President Trump announced he had ordered the US military “to launch decisive and powerful military action against the Houthi terrorists in Yemen.” (White House)

Nevertheless, the Trump administration seems determined to “punch back,” in the words of Morgan Ortagus, the deputy presidential special envoy to the Middle East.

“Terrorists are not going to be allowed to shoot at US Navy ships, to shoot at our soldiers, to shoot at our commercial vessels, to impede free and fair commerce and trade,” she said, speaking on Fox News on Sunday.

“We’re going to put an end to that … these are not the strikes from the Biden administration that were for show.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio reinforced that message in a recent appearance on CBS News. The US, he said, was “doing the entire world a favor by getting rid of these guys and their ability to strike global shipping. That's the mission here, and it will continue until that’s carried out.”

 


'I thought I'd died.' How land mines are continuing to claim lives in post-Assad Syria

Updated 55 min 21 sec ago
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'I thought I'd died.' How land mines are continuing to claim lives in post-Assad Syria

  • Contamination from land mines and explosive remnants has killed at least 249 people, including 60 children, and injured another 379 since Dec. 8
  • Farming remains the main source of income for residents in rural Idlib, making the presence of mines a daily hazard

IDLIB: Suleiman Khalil was harvesting olives in a Syrian orchard with two friends four months ago, unaware the soil beneath them still hid deadly remnants of war.
The trio suddenly noticed a visible mine lying on the ground. Panicked, Khalil and his friends tried to leave, but he stepped on a land mine and it exploded. His friends, terrified, ran to find an ambulance, but Khalil, 21, thought they had abandoned him.
“I started crawling, then the second land mine exploded,” Khalil told The Associated Press. “At first, I thought I’d died. I didn’t think I would survive this.”
Khalil’s left leg was badly wounded in the first explosion, while his right leg was blown off from above the knee in the second. He used his shirt to tourniquet the stump and screamed for help until a soldier nearby heard him and rushed for his aid.
“There were days I didn’t want to live anymore,” Khalil said, sitting on a thin mattress, his amputated leg still wrapped in a white cloth four months after the incident. Khalil, who is from the village of Qaminas, in the southern part of Syria’s Idlib province, is engaged and dreams of a prosthetic limb so he can return to work and support his family again.
While the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war came to an end with the fall of Bashar Assad on Dec. 8, war remnants continue to kill and maim. Contamination from land mines and explosive remnants has killed at least 249 people, including 60 children, and injured another 379 since Dec. 8, according to INSO, an international organization which coordinates safety for aid workers.
Mines and explosive remnants — widely used since 2011 by Syrian government forces, its allies, and armed opposition groups — have contaminated vast areas, many of which only became accessible after the Assad government’s collapse, leading to a surge in the number of land mine casualties, according to a recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report.
‘It will take ages to clear them all’
Prior to Dec. 8, land mines and explosive remnants of war also frequently injured or killed civilians returning home and accessing agricultural land.
“Without urgent, nationwide clearance efforts, more civilians returning home to reclaim critical rights, lives, livelihoods, and land will be injured and killed,” said Richard Weir, a senior crisis and conflict researcher at HRW.
Experts estimate that tens of thousands of land mines remain buried across Syria, particularly in former front-line regions like rural Idlib.
“We don’t even have an exact number,” said Ahmad Jomaa, a member of a demining unit under Syria’s defense ministry. “It will take ages to clear them all.”
Jomaa spoke while scanning farmland in a rural area east of Maarrat Al-Numan with a handheld detector, pointing at a visible anti-personnel mine nestled in dry soil.
“This one can take off a leg,” he said. “We have to detonate it manually.”
Psychological trauma and broader harm
Farming remains the main source of income for residents in rural Idlib, making the presence of mines a daily hazard. Days earlier a tractor exploded nearby, severely injuring several farm workers, Jomaa said. “Most of the mines here are meant for individuals and light vehicles, like the ones used by farmers,” he said.
Jomaa’s demining team began dismantling the mines immediately after the previous government was ousted. But their work comes at a steep cost.
“We’ve had 15 to 20 (deminers) lose limbs, and around a dozen of our brothers were killed doing this job,” he said. Advanced scanners, needed to detect buried or improvised devices, are in short supply, he said. Many land mines are still visible to the naked eye, but others are more sophisticated and harder to detect.
Land mines not only kill and maim but also cause long-term psychological trauma and broader harm, such as displacement, loss of property, and reduced access to essential services, HRW says.
The rights group has urged the transitional government to establish a civilian-led mine action authority in coordination with the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) to streamline and expand demining efforts.
Syria’s military under the Assad government laid explosives years ago to deter opposition fighters. Even after the government seized nearby territories, it made little effort to clear the mines it left behind.
‘Every day someone is dying’
Standing before his brother’s grave, Salah Sweid holds up a photo on his phone of Mohammad, smiling behind a pile of dismantled mines. “My mother, like any other mother would do, warned him against going,” Salah said. “But he told them, ‘If I don’t go and others don’t go, who will? Every day someone is dying.’”
Mohammad was 39 when he died on Jan. 12 while demining in a village in Idlib. A former Syrian Republican Guard member trained in planting and dismantling mines, he later joined the opposition during the uprising, scavenging weapon debris to make arms.
He worked with Turkish units in Azaz, a city in northwest Syria, using advanced equipment, but on the day he died, he was on his own. As he defused one mine, another hidden beneath it detonated. After Assad’s ouster, mines littered his village in rural Idlib. He had begun volunteering to clear them — often without proper equipment — responding to residents’ pleas for help, even on holidays when his demining team was off duty, his brother said.
For every mine cleared by people like Mohammad, many more remain.
In a nearby village, Jalal Al-Maarouf, 22, was tending to his goats three days after the Assad government’s collapse when he stepped on a mine. Fellow shepherds rushed him to a hospital, where doctors amputated his left leg.
He has added his name to a waiting list for a prosthetic, “but there’s nothing so far,” he said from his home, gently running a hand over the smooth edge of his stump. “As you can see, I can’t walk.” The cost of a prosthetic limb is in excess of $3,000 and far beyond his means.


Iran and US conclude second round of negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program in Rome

Updated 20 April 2025
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Iran and US conclude second round of negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program in Rome

  • President Donald Trump has been pushing for rapid deal with Iran while threatening military action against it
  • Talks even happening represents a historic moment, given the decades of enmity between the two countries

ROME: Iran and the United States will begin having experts meet to discuss details of a possible deal over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program, the top Iranian diplomat said Saturday after a second round of negotiations in Rome.
The comments by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who met with US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff for several hours, suggest movement in the talks. The experts will meet in Oman before Araghchi and Witkoff meet again in Oman on April 26, Araghchi said.
There was no immediate readout from the US side after the meeting at the Omani Embassy in Rome’s Camilluccia neighborhood. However, President Donald Trump has been pushing for a rapid deal with Iran while threatening military action against it.
“The talks were held in a constructive environment and I can say that is moving forward,” Araghchi told Iranian state television. “I hope that we will be in a better position after the technical talks.”
He added: “This time, we succeeded to reach a better understanding about a sort of principles and aims.”
Iranian officials described the talks as indirect, like those last weekend in Muscat, Oman, with Omani Foreign Minister Badr Al-Busaidi shuttling between them in different rooms.
That talks are even happening represents a historic moment, given the decades of enmity between the two countries since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the US Embassy hostage crisis. Trump, in his first term, unilaterally withdrew from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018, setting off years of attacks and negotiations that failed to restore the accord that drastically limited Tehran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Talks come as tensions rise in the Mideast
At risk is a possible American or Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, or the Iranians following through on their threats to pursue an atomic weapon. Meanwhile, tensions in the Middle East have spiked over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and after US airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels killed more than 70 people and wounded dozens more.
“I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon,” Trump said Friday. “I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Araghchi met Saturday morning with Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani ahead of the talks with Witkoff.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, also met Tajani on Saturday. Grossi’s agency would likely be key in verifying compliance by Iran should a deal be reached, as it did with the 2015 accord Iran reached with world powers.
Tajani said Italy was ready “to facilitate the continuation of the talks even for sessions at the technical level.”
A diplomat deal “is built patiently, day after day, with dialogue and mutual respect,” he said in a statement.
Araghchi, Witkoff both traveled ahead of talks
Both men have been traveling in recent days. Witkoff had been in Paris for talks about Ukraine as Russia’s full-scale war there grinds on. Araghchi paid a visit to Moscow, where he met with officials, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia, one of the world powers involved in Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal, could be a key participant in any future deal reached between Tehran and Washington. Analysts suggest Moscow could potentially take custody of Iran’s uranium enriched to 60 percent purity — a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90 percent.
Oman’s capital, Muscat, hosted the first round of negotiations between Araghchi and Witkoff last weekend, which saw the two men meet face to face after indirect talks. Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, has long served as an interlocutor between Iran and the West.
Ahead of the talks, however, Iran seized on comments by Witkoff first suggesting Iran could enrich uranium at 3.67 percent, then later saying that all enrichment must stop. Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wrote on X before the talks that Iran would not accept giving up its enrichment program like Libya, or agreeing to using uranium enriched abroad for its nuclear program.
“Iran has come for a balanced agreement, not a surrender,” he wrote.
Iran seeks a deal to steady a troubled economy
Iran’s internal politics are still inflamed over the mandatory hijab, or headscarf, with women still ignoring the law on the streets of Tehran. Rumors also persist over the government potentially increasing the cost of subsidized gasoline in the country, which has sparked nationwide protests in the past
Iran’s rial currency plunged to over 1 million to a US dollar earlier this month. The currency has improved with the talks, however, something Tehran hopes will continue.
Meanwhile, two used Airbus A330-200 long sought by Iran’s flag carrier, Iran Air, arrived at Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport on Thursday, flight-tracking data analyzed by The Associated Press showed. The planes, formerly of China’s Hainan Airlines, had been in Muscat and re-registered to Iran.
The aircraft have Rolls-Royce engines, which include significant American parts and servicing. Such a transaction would need approval from the US Treasury given sanctions on Iran. The State Department and Treasury did not respond to requests for comment.
Under the 2015 deal, Iran could purchase new aircraft and had lined up tens of billions of dollars in deals with Airbus and Boeing Co. However, the manufacturers backed away from the deals over Trump’s threats to the nuclear accord.


Neighbours improvise first aid for wounded in besieged Sudan city

Updated 20 April 2025
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Neighbours improvise first aid for wounded in besieged Sudan city

  • the Saudi Hospital is the only partially functioning one now, according to a medical source there, and even that has come under repeated attack.

Port Sudan: For a week, eight-year-old Mohamed has suffered the pain of shrapnel stuck in his arm. But he is one of the lucky ones in Sudan’s western city El-Fasher, which is under paramilitary attack.
“One of our neighbors used to be a nurse. She helped us stop the bleeding,” Mohamed’s father, Issa Said, 27, told AFP via satellite connection under a total communications blackout.
“But his arm is swollen and he can’t sleep at night from the pain.”
Like an estimated one million more people trapped in the city under a year-long siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Said cannot get to a hospital for emergency care.
With only the most meagre supplies remaining in El-Fasher, his family is among those whose only medical help has come from neighbors and family members who improvise.
In its quest to seize the North Darfur state capital — the only major Darfur city it has not conquered during two years of war with Sudan’s army — the RSF has launched attack after attack, which have been repelled by army and allied forces.
Even if people were to brave the streets, the Saudi Hospital is the only partially functioning one now, according to a medical source there, and even that has come under repeated attack.
Humanitarian operations in El-Fasher have been severely disrupted due to “access constraints, a critical fuel shortage and a volatile security environment,” with health services particularly affected, the United Nations’ humanitarian agency OCHA said.
’Opened their homes’
Mohamed, an aid coordinator who fled to El-Fasher after getting shot in the thigh during an RSF attack days ago on the nearby famine-hit Zamzam displacement camp, estimates hundreds of injured civilians are trapped in the city.
According to aid sources, hundreds of thousands have fled Zamzam for the city, which is already on the brink of mass starvation according to a UN-backed assessment.
Yet the people of El-Fasher have “opened their homes to the wounded,” Mohamed told AFP, requesting to be identified by his first name for safety.
“If you have the money, you send someone to buy clean gauze or painkillers if they can find any, but you have to make do with what you have,” said Mohamed, whose leg wound meant he had to be carried the 15 kilometers (nine miles) from Zamzam to the city, a journey that took hours.
In crowded living rooms and kitchens, civilians with barely any medical training cobble together emergency first aid, using household items and local medicinal plants to treat burns, gunshot wounds and shrapnel injuries.
Another victim, Mohamed Abakar, 29, said he was fetching water for his family when a bullet pierced his leg.
The limb immediately broke underneath him, and a neighbor dragged him into his home, fashioning him a splint out of a few pieces of wood and cloth.
“Even if it heals my broken leg, the bullet is still inside,” Abakar told AFP, also by satellite link.
Table salt as disinfectant
By Monday, the RSF’s recent attacks on El-Fasher and surrounding displacement camps had killed more than 400 people, according to the UN.
At least 825,000 children are trapped in “hell on Earth” in the city and its environs, the UN children’s agency UNICEF has warned.
The people of El-Fasher have suffered a year of RSF siege in a city the Sudanese military has also bombed from the air.
Residents have taken to hiding from the shelling in makeshift bunkers, which are often just hastily dug holes topped with bags of sand.
But not everyone makes it in time.
On Wednesday, a shell broke through Hanaa Hamad’s home, shrapnel tearing apart her husband’s abdomen before they could scramble to safety.
“A neighbor and I treated him as best we could. We disinfected the wound with table salt and we managed to stop the bleeding,” the 34-year-old mother of four told AFP.
But by morning, he had succumbed to his injuries, too severe for his wife and neighbor to handle.
Trying to recover from his leg wound, the aid coordinator Mohamed pleaded from his sick bed for “urgent intervention from anyone who can to save people.”
The medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Friday called for aid airdrops.
“If the roads to El-Fasher are blocked, then air operations must be launched to bring food and medicines to the estimated one million people trapped there and being starved,” head of mission Rasmane Kabore said.


Father of American hostage in Gaza hopeful he is still alive

Updated 20 April 2025
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Father of American hostage in Gaza hopeful he is still alive

  • The armed wing of Hamas said on Saturday it did not know the fate of Alexander, after noting that the guard holding him was killed

WASHINGTON: The father of a US-Israeli hostage held in Gaza said on Saturday he remains hopeful his 21-year-old son was still alive after Hamas said it could not account for his status.
Adi Alexander, whose son Edan was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured on October 7, 2023, called on the United States to engage in direct talks to free the remaining hostages – dead and alive – abducted during the deadly attack launched by Hamas two years ago in southern Israel. “I think we should engage back with them directly and see what can be done in regards to my son, four American dead hostages and everybody else,” the father said in an interview on Saturday.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Father urges US to engage in direct talks for hostages

• Hamas claims uncertainty over Edan Alexander’s fate

• US State Department demands immediate release of hostages

“It seems like the negotiations are stalled, everything is stuck and we are kind of back to a year ago,” he added. “It’s really concerning.” Hamas had previously agreed to release Edan Alexander, believed to be the last surviving American hostage held by the militant Palestinian group, as well as the bodies of four other Americans it captured on October 7, 2023. The armed wing of Hamas said on Saturday it did not know the fate of Alexander, after noting that the guard holding him was killed. Reuters could not verify Hamas’ claim.
Hamas abducted Edan Alexander when he was 19 during its attack that killed nearly 1,200 people and triggered Israel’s ongoing incursion in Gaza, the Palestinian enclave controlled by Hamas.
Edan, who holds dual nationality, grew up in New Jersey. His father said his son was an “all-American kid, great athlete ..., such a loving, loving boy” who found himself in “the wrong place, wrong time.”
Hamas recently released an undated video, purportedly of Edan. His father Adi said, “He looked very scary to us — just a horrible, horrible video.”
A hostage video is, by definition, made under duress and the statements in it are usually coerced, according to international law groups and human rights experts.
He said if he could speak to his son now, he would tell him, “Just believe. You know, nobody forgot about you. Definitely not your parents, and everybody is fighting for your release on the highest level in the States and I believe also in Israel.”
Fifty-nine hostages remain in Gaza. Fewer than half of them are believed to be still alive.
A US State Department spokesperson had no comment on the status of Alexander but reiterated that Hamas must immediately release him and all remaining hostages, and that Hamas “bears sole responsibility for the war, and for the resumption of hostilities.”

 


Israeli PM says to return hostages without giving in to ‘Hamas dictates’

Updated 19 April 2025
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Israeli PM says to return hostages without giving in to ‘Hamas dictates’

  • “I believe we can bring our hostages home without surrendering to Hamas’s dictates,” Netanyahu said
  • “We are at a critical stage of the campaign, and at this point, we need patience”

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Saturday to bring home the remaining hostages in Gaza without yielding to Hamas’ demands, insisting the military campaign in the Palestinian territory had reached a “critical stage.”
“I believe we can bring our hostages home without surrendering to Hamas’s dictates,” Netanyahu said, in his first comments since Hamas, seeking a permanent end to the Gaza war, rejected a new truce proposal from Israel.
“We are at a critical stage of the campaign, and at this point, we need patience and determination to win.”
The remarks drew a swift rebuttal from an Israeli campaign group representing the hostages’ families, which accused Netanyahu of having “no plan” for securing the captives’ freedom.
“There is one clear, feasible, and urgent solution that can be achieved now: reach a deal that will bring everyone home — even if it means stopping the fighting,” Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.
Netanyahu, however, insisted that ending the war now would embolden the country’s enemies.
“Ending the war under these surrender conditions would send a message to all of Israel’s enemies: that abducting Israelis can bring Israel to its knees. It would prove that terrorism pays — and that message would endanger the entire free world,” he said.
Hamas, Netanyahu said, was “demanding the end of the war and the continuation of its rule,” as well as a full Israeli withdrawal, “which would enable Hamas to rearm and plan more attacks against us.”
“If we commit to ending the war, we will not be able to resume fighting in Gaza,” he said.
“So I ask you — did our soldiers fight in vain? Did our heroes fall and suffer for nothing?“