ADEN: Yemen’s government ordered tighter tax collection at ports under its control Tuesday as it began preparing its 2019 budget with no end in sight to nearly four years of war.
The government had approved just one formal budget since rebels overran the capital Sanaa in 2014, seizing most of the rest of the country and forcing President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi to flee into exile.
After a meeting in its interim headquarters in second city Aden late on Monday, the government announced the formation of a committee to draw up a 2019 budget, which is again expected to run a huge deficit.
This year’s budget, approved in January, projected a deficit of $1.3 billion. There has been no official update since then on the state of the government’s finances but the actual deficit is expected to be far higher.
The value of the Yemeni rial has dived more than 36 percent since the start of the year, despite a $2 billion deposit in the central bank by Saudi Arabia aimed at shoring it up.
The rial has now lost two-thirds of its value since 2015, when a Saudi-led military coalition intervened in support of Hadi’s government triggering a grueling war of attrition.
The collapse in purchasing power in an impoverished country long dependent on imports for basic foodstuffs has left most of the population dependent on humanitarian aid — and nearly 14 million at risk of famine.
The government levies taxes and duties totaling 10 percent on goods entering areas under its control but the war has made collection uneven.
The cabinet approved measures to improve collection “on all taxable imports at all land, sea and air ports in liberated areas,” the government-run Saba news agency reported on Tuesday.
The move came as fighting flared around the Red Sea city of Hodeidah — home to Yemen’s most important port — which has been under rebel control since 2014 but has been under assault by government and coalition forces since June.
There was a brief lull in the fighting as the United Nations attempted to convene peace talks in Switzerland in early September but it resumed when that effort collapsed.
Aid agencies have warned that an all-out battle for Hodeida, the entry point for nearly all UN-supervised humanitarian aid, would trigger heavy civilian casualties and a major famine.
The World Bank has said that no improvement in the Yemeni economy is foreseeable without an end to the war, and that even then the dividends of peace will not reach the 80 percent of Yemenis who live in poverty.
Yemen government eyes budget as war famine looms
Yemen government eyes budget as war famine looms
- This year’s budget, approved in January, projected a deficit of $1.3 billion
- The government levies taxes and duties totaling 10 percent on goods entering areas under its control
Hamas military arm releases new video of Israeli hostage in Gaza
- The man identified himself as an Israeli hostage held in Gaza
JERUSALEM: The military arm of the Palestinian militant group Hamas released a video Saturday of a man identifying himself as an Israeli hostage held in Gaza since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
In the video, whose date cannot be verified, a man addresses US President-elect Donald Trump in English and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Hebrew.
Gaza rescuers say 3 aid workers killed in Israel strike
- The agency said the aid workers killed were Palestinian employees of World Central Kitchen
- The US aid group did not immediately respond to AFP requests for comment
GAZA: Gaza’s civil defense agency said three aid workers were killed in an Israeli air strike in the Hamas-run territory on Saturday but the Israeli army said it killed a “terrorist.”
The agency said the aid workers killed were Palestinian employees of World Central Kitchen. The US aid group did not immediately respond to AFP requests for comment.
The Israeli army said it had “struck a vehicle with a terrorist that took part in the murderous October 7 massacre,” referring to militant group Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel last year.
“The claim that the terrorist was simultaneously a WCK worker is being examined,” it added in a statement.
Civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the bodies of “at least five dead were transported (to hospital), including (those of) the three employees of World Central Kitchen.”
“All three men worked for WCK and they were hit while driving in a WCK jeep in Khan Yunis,” Bassal said, adding that the vehicle had been “marked with its logo clearly visible.”
The Israeli army insisted its strike in the main southern city hit “a civilian unmarked vehicle and its movement on the route was not coordinated for transporting of aid.”
In April, an Israeli air strike killed seven WCK staff — an Australian, three Britons, a North American, a Palestinian and a Pole.
Israel said it had been targeting a “Hamas gunman” in that strike but the military admitted a series of “grave mistakes” and violations of its own rules of engagement.
The October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,207 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed 44,382 people in Gaza, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.
Several wounded in two Israeli strikes in south Lebanon, health ministry says
- Later on Saturday, another person was injured in a separate Israeli strike on Al Bisariya
- The Israeli military said it had attacked a Hezbollah facility
CAIRO: An Israeli strike on a car wounded three people, including a seven-year-old child, on Saturday in the south Lebanon village of Majdal Zoun, the Lebanese Health Ministry said in a statement.
Later on Saturday, another person was injured in a separate Israeli strike on Al Bisariya, which lies near the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, the ministry said.
The Israeli military said it had attacked a Hezbollah facility in Sidon that housed rocket launchers for the armed group.
It added that it had also hit a vehicle in southern Lebanon loaded with rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and military equipment as part of its actions against ceasefire violations.
A truce came into effect on Wednesday, but both sides have accused each other of breaching a ceasefire that aims to halt over a year of fighting.
West faces ‘reckoning’ over Middle East radicalization: UK spy chief
- MI6 head Richard Moore cites ‘terrible loss of innocent life’
- ‘In 37 years in the intelligence profession, I’ve never seen the world in a more dangerous state’
LONDON: The West has “yet to have a full reckoning with the radicalizing impact of the fighting, the terrible loss of innocent life in the Middle East and the horrors of Oct. 7,” the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6 has warned.
Richard Moore made the comments in a speech delivered to the British Embassy in Paris, and was joined by his French counterpart Nicolas Lerner.
Moore said: “In 37 years in the intelligence profession, I’ve never seen the world in a more dangerous state. And the impact on Europe, our shared European home, could hardly be more serious.”
Daesh is expanding its reach and staging deadly attacks in Iran and Russia despite suffering significant territorial setbacks, he added, warning that “the menace of terrorism has not gone away.”
In October last year, Ken McCallum, the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence service MI5, said his agency was monitoring for increased terror risks in the UK due to the Gaza war. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in over a year of fighting.
In Lebanon, a 60-day truce agreed this week between Hezbollah and Israel brought an end to a conflict that has killed thousands of Lebanese civilians.
Israel military strikes kill 32 Palestinians in Gaza, medics say
- Among the 32 killed, at least seven died in an Israeli strike on a house in central Gaza City
The Israeli military said it killed a Palestinian it accused of involvement in Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel in a vehicle strike in Gaza, and is investigating claims that the individual was an employee of aid group World Central Kitchen.
At least 32 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military strikes across Gaza overnight and into Saturday, with most casualties reported in northern areas, medics told Reuters.
Later on Saturday medics said seven people were killed when an Israeli air strike targeted a vehicle near a gathering of Palestinians receiving aid in the southern area of Khan Younis south of the enclave.
According to residents and a Hamas source, the vehicle targeted near a crowd receiving flour belonged to security personnel responsible for overseeing the delivery of aid shipments into Gaza.
Among the 32 killed, at least seven died in an Israeli strike on a house in central Gaza City, according to a statement from the Gaza Civil Defense and the official Palestinian news agency WAFA early on Saturday.
The Gaza Civil Defense also reported that one of its officers was killed in attacks in northern Gaza’s Jabalia, bringing the total number of civil defense workers killed since October 7, 2023, to 88.
Earlier on Saturday, WAFA reported that three employees of the World Central Kitchen, a US-based, non-governmental humanitarian agency, were killed when a civilian vehicle was targeted in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
The World Central Kitchen has not yet commented on the incident.
