Yemeni forces intensify efforts to retake port city from Houthi control

With battles raging at the southern side of Al-Hodeidah International Airport, the Yemeni military said it had entirely seized the facility. AFP
Updated 17 June 2018
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Yemeni forces intensify efforts to retake port city from Houthi control

  • The officials said if government forces capture the Kilo 16 Road they would trap the Houthi militias in Hodeidah and the western coast and prevent them from receiving supplies from the capital
  • Saudi Arabia has provided air support, with targeting guidance and refueling coming from the US

SANAA: Yemeni forces backed by the Arab coalition have intensified their efforts to retake Yemen’s port city of Hodeidah from the Iranian-backed Houthi militias, Yemeni officials and witnesses said on Saturday.

Hodeidah is an important port city as it serves as the nation’s main gateway for food shipments.
With battles raging at the southern side of Al-Hodeidah International Airport, the Yemeni military said it had entirely seized the facility, and that engineers were working to clear mines from nearby areas just south of the city of some 600,000 people on the Red Sea.
“The armed forces which are supported by the Arab coalition have freed the Al-Hodeidah International Airport from the Houthi militias and the engineering teams have started to clean the airport and its surroundings from mines and bombs,” the military said on its official Twitter account.
Sadek Dawad, a spokesman for the Republican Guards force allied with the coalition, said the government forces had battled onto the airport grounds.
Dawad also said the southern gate of Hodeidah city was captured by pro-coalition forces.
“The military operations to liberate the city of Hodeidah will not be stopped until we secure the city and its strategic port and that won’t last too long,” he told The Associated Press.
Houthi militias, who hold the country’s capital of Sanaa, did not immediately acknowledge losing the airport.
The Houthi-run Al Masirah satellite news channel aired footage it described as being from near Hodeidah showing a burned-out truck, corpses of irregular fighters and a damaged Emirati armored vehicle. The Iranian-aligned fighters rifled through a military ledger from the vehicle before chanting their slogan: “Death to America, death to Israel, damn the Jews, victory to Islam!”
Yemeni officials and witnesses said forces from the UAE-backed Amaleqa brigades, backed by air cover from the coalition forces, were heading to eastern Hodeidah province to attempt to cut off the main road that links it with the capital, Sanaa.
The officials said if government forces capture the Kilo 16 Road they would trap the Houthi militias in Hodeidah and the western coast and prevent them from receiving supplies from the capital. The Houthis are then expected to have no choice but to head to the northern province of Hajjah.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief media and the witnesses for fear of reprisals.
The Norwegian Refugee Council said humanitarian agencies could not reach the southern part of Hodeidah as fighting escalated.
UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths, meanwhile, arrived in Sanaa in an effort to broker a cease-fire.
The Arab military coalition began its assault Wednesday on Hodeidah. Emirati forces are leading ground forces mixed with their own troops, irregular militiamen and soldiers backing Yemen’s government. Saudi Arabia has provided air support, with targeting guidance and refueling coming from the US.
Some 70 percent of Yemen’s food enters via the port, as well as the bulk of humanitarian aid and fuel supplies. Around two-thirds of the country’s population of 27 million relies on aid.
The coalition said it had no choice but to launch the assault as the port provided millions of dollars for the Houthis through customs controls. They also accuse the Houthis of using the port to smuggle weapons through, something a UN panels of experts described in January as “unlikely” as incoming ships require UN permission and are subject to random searches.
The UN and Western nations say Iran has supplied the Houthis with weapons, from assault rifles to the ballistic missiles they have fired deep into Saudi Arabia, including at the capital, Riyadh.
Aid agencies and the UN evacuated international staff from the city ahead of the offensive. Some of the wounded able to flee are driving onto Aden, some 315 kilometers (195 miles) away, after being stabilized at a hospital in Mocha on the way, the aid group Doctors Without Borders said. The local hospital in Hodeidah already is struggling to help the wounded, the group said.
Thousands remain besieged in the city and around the airport due to the fighting.
The Houthis seized control of Sanaa in September 2014, later pushing south toward the port city of Aden.
The Arab military coalition entered the conflict in March 2015. The Houthis, meanwhile, have laid landmines killing and wounding civilians, targeted religious minorities and imprisoned opponents.

French forces
French special forces are present on the ground in Yemen with forces from the UAE, French newspaper Le Figaro reported on Saturday, citing two military sources.
The newspaper gave no further information about their activities. The Defense Ministry was not immediately available for comment, but its usual policy is not to comment on special forces’ operations, according to Reuters.
A French parliamentary source recently told Reuters French special forces were in Yemen.
The French Defense Ministry said on Friday that France was studying the possibility of carrying out a minesweeping operation to provide access to the port of Hodeidah once the coalition had wrapped up its military operations.
The ministry stressed that France at this stage had no military operations in the Hodeidah region and was not part of the Arab coalition.
France, along with the US and Britain, backs the Arab coalition in the Yemen conflict.


Two Israeli strikes hit south Beirut: Lebanon state media

Updated 5 sec ago
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Two Israeli strikes hit south Beirut: Lebanon state media

BEIRUT: Lebanese state media reported two Israeli strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sunday, about an hour after the Israeli military posted evacuation calls online for parts of the Hezbollah bastion.
“Israeli warplanes launched two violent strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs in the Kafaat area,” the official National News Agency said.
The southern Beirut area has been repeatedly struck since September 23 when Israel intensified its air campaign also targeting Hezbollah bastions in Lebanon’s east and south. It later sent in ground troops to southern Lebanon.
AFPTV footage showed grey smoke billowing over south Beirut.
The raids “caused massive destruction over a large geographical area” of the Kafaat district, NNA said.
Earlier Sunday, Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee warned on social media platform X that the military would strike “Hezbollah facilities and interests” in the Hadath and Burj Al-Barajneh districts, also sharing maps of the areas to be evacuated.
Full-on war erupted following nearly a year of limited exchanges of fire initiated by Iran-backed Hezbollah in support of its ally Hamas, after the Palestinian group’s October 7, 2023 attack sparked the Gaza war.

Israel records 160 launches fom Lebanon as Hezbollah targets Tel Aviv, south

Israeli security forces and people inspect a damaged house at a site hit by rockets fired from Lebanon in Rinatya village.
Updated 24 November 2024
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Israel records 160 launches fom Lebanon as Hezbollah targets Tel Aviv, south

  • Medical agencies reported that at least 11 people were wounded, including a man in a “moderate to serious” condition

JERUSALEM: Israel’s army said Hezbollah fired around 160 projectiles into its territory from Lebanon on Sunday, with the group saying its attacks had targeted the Tel Aviv area and Israel’s south.
The Iran-backed group said in a statement that it had “launched, for the first time, an aerial attack using a swarm of attack drones on the Ashdod naval base” in southern Israel.
Later, it said it fired “a barrage of advanced missiles and a swarm of attack drones” at a “military target” in Tel Aviv, and had also launched a volley of missiles at the Glilot army intelligence base in the city’s suburbs.
The Israeli military did not comment on the specific attack claims when contacted by AFP.
But it said earlier that air raid sirens had sounded in several locations in central and northern Israel, including in the greater Tel Aviv suburbs.
It later reported that “approximately 160 projectiles that were fired by the Hezbollah terrorist organization have crossed from Lebanon into Israel.”
Some of the projectiles were shot down.
Medical agencies reported that at least 11 people were wounded, including a man in a “moderate to serious” condition.
AFP images from Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv, showed several damaged and burned-out cars, and a house pockmarked by shrapnel.
The wave of projectiles follows at least four deadly Israeli strikes in central Beirut in the past week, including one that killed Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif.
In a speech on Wednesday, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem had said the response to the recent strikes on the capital “must be expected on central Tel Aviv.”
The Lebanese army, meanwhile, said that a soldier was killed on Sunday and 18 others injured, “including some with severe wounds, as a result of an Israeli attack targeting a Lebanese army center in Amriyeh.”
Though the Lebanese army is not a party to the war between Israel and Hezbollah, Israeli strikes have killed 19 Lebanese soldiers in the last two months, authorities have said.
Since September 23, Israel has intensified its Lebanon air campaign, later sending in ground troops after nearly a year of limited exchanges of fire initiated by Hezbollah in support of its ally Hamas after the Palestinian group’s October 7, 2023 attack, which sparked the Gaza war.
Lebanon’s health ministry says at least 3,670 people have been killed in the country since October 2023, most of them since September this year.


Israeli strike on Lebanese army center kills soldier, wounds 18 others

Updated 24 November 2024
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Israeli strike on Lebanese army center kills soldier, wounds 18 others

  • It was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes that have killed over 40 Lebanese troops
  • Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister condemned it as an assault on US-led ceasefire efforts

BEIRUT: An Israeli strike on a Lebanese army center on Sunday killed one soldier and wounded 18 others, the Lebanese military said.

It was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes that have killed over 40 Lebanese troops, even as the military has largely kept to the sidelines in the war between Israel and Hezbollah militants.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has said previous strikes on Lebanese troops were accidental and that they are not a target of its campaign against Hezbollah.

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, condemned it as an assault on US-led ceasefire efforts, calling it a “direct, bloody message rejecting all efforts and ongoing contacts” to end the war.

“(Israel is) again writing in Lebanese blood a brazen rejection of the solution that is being discussed,” a statement from his office read.

The strike occurred in southwestern Lebanon on the coastal road between Tyre and Naqoura, where there has been heavy fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

Hezbollah began firing rockets, missiles and drones into Israel after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack out of the Gaza Strip ignited the war there. Hezbollah has portrayed the attacks as an act of solidarity with the Palestinians and Hamas. Iran supports both armed groups.

Israel has launched retaliatory airstrikes since the rocket fire began, and in September the low-level conflict erupted into all-out war, as Israel launched waves of airstrikes across large parts of Lebanon and killed Hezbollah’s top leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and several of his top commanders.

Israeli airstrikes early Saturday pounded central Beirut, killing at least 20 people and wounding 66, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. Hezbollah has continued to fire regular barrages into Israel, forcing people to race for shelters and occasionally killing or wounding them.

Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,500 people in Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. The fighting has displaced about 1.2 million people, or a quarter of Lebanon’s population.

On the Israeli side, about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians have been killed by bombardments in northern Israel and in battle following Israel’s ground invasion in early October. Around 60,000 Israelis have been displaced from the country’s north.

The Biden administration has spent months trying to broker a ceasefire, and US envoy Amos Hochstein was back in the region last week.

The emerging agreement would pave the way for the withdrawal of Hezbollah militants and Israeli troops from southern Lebanon below the Litani River in accordance with the UN Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 war. Lebanese troops would patrol the area, with the presence of UN peacekeepers.

Lebanon’s army reflects the religious diversity of the country and is respected as a national institution, but it does not have the military capability to impose its will on Hezbollah or resist Israel’s invasion.


EU’s Borrell urges pressure on Israel, Hezbollah to accept US ceasefire proposal

Updated 24 November 2024
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EU’s Borrell urges pressure on Israel, Hezbollah to accept US ceasefire proposal

  • The EU’s foreign policy chief warned that Lebanon was “on the brink of collapse”

BEIRUT: The European Union’s foreign policy chief called on Sunday during a visit to Beirut for pressure to be exerted on both the Israeli government and on Lebanon’s Hezbollah to accept a US ceasefire proposal.
Speaking at a news conference in Beirut, Josep Borell also urged Lebanese leaders to pick a president to end a two-year power vacuum in the country, and he pledged 200 million euros in support for Lebanon’s armed forces. 

Lebanon on 'brink of collapse'

The EU’s foreign policy chief warned that Lebanon was “on the brink of collapse” after Israel launched an intense air campaign two months ago following nearly a year of clashes with Hezbollah.
“Back in September I came and was still hoping we could prevent a full-fledged war of Israel attacking Lebanon. Two months later Lebanon is on the brink of collapse,” Josep Borrell told reporters in Beirut.


Israeli army orders Gaza City suburb evacuated, spurring new displacement wave

Updated 24 November 2024
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Israeli army orders Gaza City suburb evacuated, spurring new displacement wave

  • Israeli military blames Hamas rocket fire for renewed evacuation directive
  • Palestinians say hospitals in north Gaza barely functioning

CAIRO: The Israeli military issued new evacuation orders to residents in areas of an eastern Gaza City suburb, setting off a new wave of displacement on Sunday, and a Gaza hospital director was injured in an Israeli drone attack, Palestinian medics said.
The new orders for the Shejaia suburb posted by the Israeli army spokesperson on X on Saturday night were blamed on Palestinian militants firing rockets from that heavily built-up district in the north of the Gaza Strip.
“For your safety, you must evacuate immediately to the south,” the military’s post said. The rocket volley on Saturday was claimed by Hamas’ armed wing, which said it had targeted an Israeli army base over the border.
Footage circulated on social and Palestinian media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed residents leaving Shejaia on donkey carts and rickshaws, with others, including children carrying backpacks, walking.
Families living in the targeted areas began fleeing their homes after nightfall on Saturday and into Sunday’s early hours, residents and Palestinian media said — the latest in multiple waves of displacement since the war began 13 months ago.
In central Gaza, health officials said at least 10 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes on the urban camps of Al-Maghazi and Al-Bureij since Saturday night.
Hospital director wounded by gunfire
In north Gaza, where Israeli forces have been operating against regrouping Hamas militants since early last month, health officials said an Israeli drone dropped bombs on Kamal Adwan Hospital, injuring its director Hussam Abu Safiya.
“This will not stop us from completing our humanitarian mission and we will continue to do this job at any cost,” Abu Safiya said in a video statement circulated by the health ministry on Sunday.
“We are being targeted daily. They targeted me a while ago but this will not deter us...,” he said from his hospital bed.
Israeli forces say armed militants use civilian buildings including housing blocks, hospitals and schools for operational cover. Hamas denies this, accusing Israeli forces of indiscriminately targeting populated areas.
Kamal Adwan is one of three hospitals in north Gaza that are barely operational as the health ministry said the Israeli forces have detained and expelled medical staff and prevented emergency medical, food and fuel supplies from reaching them.
In the past few weeks, Israel said it had facilitated the delivery of medical and fuel supplies and the transfer of patients from north Gaza hospitals in collaboration with international agencies such as the World Health Organization.
Residents in three embattled north Gaza towns — Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun — said Israeli forces had blown up hundreds of houses since renewing operations in an area that Israel said months ago had been cleared of militants.
Palestinians say Israel appears determined to depopulate the area permanently to create a buffer zone along the northern edge of Gaza, an accusation Israel denies.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 44,000 people, uprooted nearly all the enclave’s 2.3 million population at least once, according to Gaza officials, while reducing wide swathes of the narrow coastal territory to rubble.
The war erupted in response to a cross-border attack by Hamas-led militants on Oct. 7, 2023 in which gunmen killed around 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.