US envoy to Yemen holds talks in London to revive peace efforts

US envoy to Yemen Tim Lenderking meets with UK Minister for Middle East and North Africa James Cleverly in London. (Twitter/@JamesCleverly)
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Updated 28 January 2022
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US envoy to Yemen holds talks in London to revive peace efforts

  • Talks focused on the urgent need for de-escalation and to address economic stability and the humanitarian crisis in Yemen
  • US says has to fully consider humanitarian implications to designating Houthis as terrorist entity

LONDON: The US envoy to Yemen Tim Lenderking held talks with senior UK and Gulf officials in London, as part of his first tour of 2022 to reinvigorate peace efforts in coordination with the UN.
During talks with the British Minister for Middle East and North Africa James Cleverly, the two sides stressed they are “committed to working together to advance a durable resolution to the Yemen conflict, help stabilize the economy, and support urgent steps to ease the humanitarian crisis.”
The US envoy also took part in a UK-hosted Quint meeting to discuss the situation in Yemen with senior representatives from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman and Britain, along with UN special envoy Hans Grundberg.

Lenderking was in Riyadh, the UAE and Oman last week, where he focused on the urgent need for de-escalation and the protection of all civilians, bringing the parties together to support a UN-led inclusive peace process, and doing more to address economic stability, humanitarian assistance access and fuel shortages, a State Department spokesperson told Arab News.
His visit comes as the Iran-backed Houthi militia have stepped up cross-border attacks against populated areas in Saudi Arabia and have attempted to strike the UAE capital twice in the last two weeks. The Houthis have also continued their brutal offensive on the Yemeni province of Marib, which has served as a safe haven for millions of internally displaced persons who have been fleeing the fighting since the conflict began in 2014.
The US has repeatedly pledged to continue to work with their partners in the region, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to help them defend against these deplorable Houthi attacks, the State Department said.

However, increased calls from regional allies are putting pressure on US President Joe Biden’s administration to relist the Houthis as a terrorist organization one year after it reversed a last-minute decision by former President Donald Trump to designate the militia.
“We will continue to work with our allies and partners in the region especially to promote accountability for the Houthis, for those Houthi leaders that have been behind these terrorist attacks,” the State Department said.
It added that the the Houthis’ redesignation as an “international terrorist organization” is “under review” and the US is expected to implement additional steps, including sanctions, to hold Houthi leaders accountable.
But when asked by Arab News about the possibility that the Biden administration will relist the militia, it said: “The United States remains committed to improving the humanitarian situation in Yemen and would have to fully consider the humanitarian implications.”
State Department spokesman Ned Price had also said that they not going to relent in designating Houthi leaders and entities involved in military offensives that threaten civilians and regional stability and perpetuate the conflict, who are responsible for some of the human rights abuses or the violations of international humanitarian law.
“When you talk about the humanitarian crisis, there is one actor that is primarily responsible for the suffering of the Yemeni people, the widespread suffering of the Yemeni people. And that is the Houthis,” Price told reporters at a press briefing.
He added they are using every appropriate tool to hold the Houthis to account.
The State Department reiterated the American condemnation of the Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and the UAE and said it remained committed to solving the Yemeni conflict.
“Helping advance a durable resolution that ends the conflict in Yemen, improves Yemeni lives, and creates the space for Yemenis to collectively determine their own future remains a top US foreign policy priority,” it said.


MSF slams Gaza aid scheme as ‘slaughter masquerading’ as aid

Updated 50 min 4 sec ago
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MSF slams Gaza aid scheme as ‘slaughter masquerading’ as aid

  • MSF says more than 500 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip while seeking food in recent weeks
  • Charity says US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation forces Palestinians to choose between starvation or risk their lives for minimal supplies

GENEVA: Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) called on Friday for a controversial Israel- and US-backed relief effort in Gaza to be halted, branding it “slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid.”
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which began operating last month, “is degrading Palestinians by design, forcing them to choose between starvation or risking their lives for minimal supplies,” MSF said in a statement.
It said more than 500 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip while seeking food in recent weeks.
Starting in March, Israel blocked deliveries of food and other crucial supplies into Gaza for more than two months, leading to warnings of that the entire population of the occupied Palestinian territory is at risk of famine.
The United Nations says Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is illegal under international law.
The densely populated Gaza Strip has been largely flattened by Israeli bombing since the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas.
Israel began allowing food supplies to trickle in at the end of May, using GHF — backed by armed US contractors, with Israeli troops on the perimeter — to run operations.
The latter have been marred by chaotic scenes and near-daily reports of Israeli forces firing on people desperate to get food.
There are also concerns about the neutrality of GHF, officially a private group with opaque funding.
The UN and major aid groups have refused to work with it, citing concerns it serves Israeli military goals and that it violates basic humanitarian principles.
The Gaza health ministry says that since late May, nearly 550 people have been killed near aid centers while seeking scarce food supplies.
“With over 500 people killed and nearly 4,000 wounded while seeking food, this scheme is slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid and must be immediately dismantled,” MSF said.
GHF has denied that fatal shootings have occurred in the immediate vicinity of its aid points.
On Tuesday, the United Nations condemned what it said was Israel’s “weaponization of food” in Gaza and called it a war crime.
MSF said the way GHF distributes food aid supplies “forces thousands of Palestinians, who have been starved by an over 100 day-long Israeli siege, to walk long distances to reach the four distribution sites and fight for scraps of food supplies.”
“These sites hinder women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities from accessing aid, and people are killed and wounded in the chaotic process,” it said.
Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Gaza, said the four sites were all under the full control of Israeli forces, surrounded by watch points and barbed wire.
“If people arrive early and approach the checkpoints, they get shot. If they arrive on time but there is an overflow and they jump over the mounds and the wires, they get shot,” he said in the statement.
“If they arrive late, they shouldn’t be there because it is an ‘evacuated zone’ — they get shot.”
MSF said that its teams in Gaza were seeing patients every day who had been killed or wounded trying to get food at one of the sites.
It pointed to “a stark increase in the number of patients with gunshot wounds.”
MSF urged “the Israeli authorities and their allies to lift the siege on food, fuel, medical and humanitarian supplies and to revert to the pre-existing principled humanitarian system coordinated by the UN.”


Israeli strike kills 18 Palestinians in central Gaza

Updated 55 min 16 sec ago
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Israeli strike kills 18 Palestinians in central Gaza

  • Victims were among a crowd of people getting bags of flour from a Palestinian police unit in Deir Al-Balah
  • The strike was the latest violence surrounding the distribution of food to Gaza’s population

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: An Israeli strike hit a street in central Gaza on Thursday where witnesses said a crowd of people was getting bags of flour from a Palestinian police unit that had confiscated the goods from gangs looting aid convoys. Hospital officials said 18 people were killed.
The strike was the latest violence surrounding the distribution of food to Gaza’s population, which has been thrown into turmoil over the past month. After blocking all food for 2 1/2 months, Israel has allowed only a trickle of supplies into the territory since mid-May.
Efforts by the United Nations to distribute the food have been plagued by armed gangs looting trucks and by crowds of desperate people offloading supplies from convoys.
The strike in the central town of Deir Al-Balah on Thursday appeared to target members of Sahm, a security unit tasked with stopping looters and cracking down on merchants who sell stolen aid at high prices. The unit is part of Gaza’s Hamas-led Interior Ministry, but includes members of other factions.
Witnesses said the Sahm unit was distributing bags of flour and other goods confiscated from looters and corrupt merchants, drawing a crowd when the strike hit.
Video of the aftermath showed bodies, several torn, of multiple young men in the street with blood splattering on the pavement and walls of buildings. The dead included a child and at least seven Sahm members, according to the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital where casualties were taken.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Israel has accused the militant Hamas group of stealing aid and using it to prop up its rule in the enclave. Israeli forces have repeatedly struck Gaza’s police, considering them a branch of Hamas.
An association of Gaza’s influential clans and tribes said Wednesday they have started an independent effort to guard aid convoys to prevent looting. The National Gathering of Palestinian Clans and Tribes said it helped escort a rare shipment of flour that entered northern Gaza that evening.
It was unclear, however, if the association had coordinated with the UN or Israeli authorities. The World Food Program did not immediately respond to requests for comment by The Associated Press.
“We will no longer allow thieves to steal from the convoys for the merchants and force us to buy them for high prices,” Abu Ahmad Al-Gharbawi, a figure involved in the tribal effort, told the AP.
Accusations from Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz in a joint statement Wednesday accused Hamas of stealing aid that is entering northern Gaza, and called on the Israeli military to plan to prevent it.
The National Gathering slammed the statement, saying the accusation of theft was aimed at justifying the Israeli military’s “aggressive practices.” It said aid was “fully secured” by the tribes, which it said were committed to delivering the supplies to the population.
The move by tribes to protect aid convoys brings yet another player in an aid situation that has become fragmented, confused and violent, even as Gaza’s more than 2 million Palestinians struggle to feed their families.
Throughout the more than 20-month-old war, the UN led the massive aid operation by humanitarian groups providing food, shelter, medicine and other goods to Palestinians despite the fighting. UN and other aid groups say that when significant amounts of supplies are allowed into Gaza, looting and theft dwindles.
Israel, however, seeks to replace the UN-led system, saying Hamas has been siphoning off large amounts of supplies from it, a claim the UN and other aid groups deny.
Israel has backed an American private contractor, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has started distributing food boxes at four locations, mainly in the far south of Gaza for the past month.
Thousands of Palestinians walk for hours to reach the hubs, moving through Israeli military zones where witnesses say Israeli troops regularly open fire with heavy barrages to control the crowds.
Health officials say hundreds of people have been killed and wounded. The Israeli military says it has only fired warning shots.
A trickle of aid
Israel has continued to allow a smaller number of aid trucks into Gaza for UN distribution. The World Health Organization said on Thursday it had been able to deliver its first medical shipment into Gaza since March 2, with nine trucks bringing blood, plasma and other supplies to Nasser Hospital, the biggest hospital still functioning in southern Gaza.
In Gaza City, large crowds gathered Thursday at an aid distribution point to receive bags of flour from the convoy that arrived the previous evening, according to photos taken by a cameraman collaborating with the AP.
Hiba Khalil, a mother of seven, said she can’t afford looted aid that is sold in markets for astronomical prices and was relieved to get flour for the first time in months.
“We’ve waited for months without having flour or eating much and our children would always cry,” she said.
Another woman, Umm Alaa Mekdad, said she hoped more convoys would make it through after struggling to deal with looters.
“The gangs used to take our shares and the shares of our children who slept hungry and thirsty,” she said.
Separately, Israeli strikes overnight and early Thursday killed at least 28 people across the Gaza Strip, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. More than 20 dead arrived at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, while the bodies of eight others were taken to Nasser Hospital in the south.


Lebanon says 1 dead, 20 wounded in Israeli strikes in south

Updated 7 min 18 sec ago
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Lebanon says 1 dead, 20 wounded in Israeli strikes in south

  • “The Israel enemy strike on an apartment in Nabatiyeh led to a preliminary toll of one woman killed” and 13 other people wounded, the ministry said
  • An Israeli drone targeted the apartment

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said a woman was killed and 20 other people were wounded in Israeli strikes Friday in the country’s south, as Israel’s military said some raids targeted Hezbollah sites.

Israel has kept up regular strikes on Lebanon, particularly in the south, since a November 27 ceasefire meant to end over a year of hostilities, including two months of all-out war that left Hezbollah severely weakened.

“The Israel enemy strike on an apartment in Nabatiyeh led to a preliminary toll of one woman killed” and 13 other people wounded, the ministry said in an updated statement carried by the official National News Agency.

The NNA said an Israeli drone targeted the apartment.

The agency earlier reported “a wave of successive heavy strikes” in several other areas in the Nabatiyeh region that the health ministry said wounded seven people.

An Israeli army statement said fighter jets struck a site that Hezbollah used “to manage its fire and defense array in the area of the Beaufort Ridge,” near Nabatiyeh and the Israel border.

It said the site was “part of a significant underground project that was completely taken out of use” by the raids.

The military said it “identified rehabilitation attempts made by Hezbollah beforehand and struck terror infrastructure sites in the area,” calling the actions “a blatant violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in a statement condemned the strikes and said Israel continued “to disregard regional and international resolutions and calls to stop the violence and escalation in the region,” urging “effective action from the international community.”

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam in a statement called the strikes “a blatant violation of national sovereignty and the cessation of hostilities arrangements” and a threat to stability.

Under the ceasefire deal, Hezbollah was to pull its fighters back north of the Litani river, some 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Israeli border, leaving the Lebanese army and United Nations peacekeepers as the only armed parties in the area.

Israel was required to fully withdraw its troops from the country but has kept them in five locations in south Lebanon that it deems strategic.

In a letter to the United Nations requesting a one-year renewal of the mandate of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon which expires in August, the foreign ministry demanded “Israel’s withdrawal from all Lebanese territory it occupies and a stop to its ongoing violations.”

On Thursday, Israeli strikes on south Lebanon killed two people, with the Israeli military saying it targeted Hezbollah operatives.


Israeli court rejects Netanyahu’s call to postpone graft trial hearings

Updated 27 June 2025
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Israeli court rejects Netanyahu’s call to postpone graft trial hearings

JERUSALEM: An Israeli court on Friday rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request to postpone giving testimony in his corruption trial, after US President Donald Trump said the case should be canceled.

Netanyahu’s lawyer on Thursday asked the court to excuse the leader from hearings over the next two weeks, saying he needed to concentrate on “security issues” after Israel’s 12-day war with Iran.

The Jerusalem district court said in a judgment published online that “in its current form (his request) does not provide a basis or detailed justification for the cancelation of the hearings.”

Trump on Wednesday described the case against Netanyahu as a “witch hunt,” saying the trial “should be CANCELLED, IMMEDIATELY, or a Pardon given to a Great Hero.”

Netanyahu has thanked Trump for his support in Israel’s brief war against Iran, which ended with a ceasefire on June 24.

Netanyahu has denied any wrongdoing and his supporters have described the long-running trial as politically motivated.

In a first case, he and his wife, Sara, are accused of accepting more than $260,000 worth of luxury goods such as cigars, jewelry and champagne from billionaires in exchange for political favors.

In two other cases, Netanyahu is accused of attempting to negotiate more favorable coverage from two Israeli media outlets.

During his current term since late 2022, Netanyahu’s government has proposed a series of far-reaching judicial reforms that critics say were designed to weaken the courts.

Netanyahu has requested multiple postponements in the trial since it began in May 2020, citing the war in Gaza which started in 2023, later fighting in Lebanon and this month the conflict with Iran.


‘She’s not coming back’: Alawite women snatched from streets of Syria

Updated 27 June 2025
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‘She’s not coming back’: Alawite women snatched from streets of Syria

  • Since March, social media has seen a steady stream of messages and video clips posted by families of missing Alawite women appealing for information about them, with new cases cropping up almost daily

DAMASCUS: “Don’t wait for her,” the WhatsApp caller told the family of Abeer Suleiman on May 21, hours after she vanished from the streets of the Syrian town of Safita. “She’s not coming back.”

Suleiman’s kidnapper and another man who identified himself as an intermediary said in subsequent calls and messages that the 29-year-old woman would be killed or trafficked into slavery unless her relatives paid them a ransom of $15,000.

“I am not in Syria,” Suleiman herself told her family in a call on May 29 from the same phone number used by her captor, which had an Iraqi country code. “All the accents around me are strange.”

Reuters reviewed the call, which the family recorded, along with about a dozen calls and messages sent by the abductor and intermediary, who had a Syrian phone number.

Suleiman is among at least 33 women and girls from Syria’s Alawite sect — aged between 16 and 39 — who have been abducted or gone missing this year in the turmoil following the fall of Bashar Assad, according to the families of all them.

The overthrow of the widely feared president in December after 14 years of civil war unleashed a furious backlash against the Muslim minority community to which he belongs, with armed factions affiliated to the current government turning on Alawite civilians in their coastal heartlands in March, killing hundreds of people.

Since March, social media has seen a steady stream of messages and video clips posted by families of missing Alawite women appealing for information about them, with new cases cropping up almost daily, according to a

Reuters review which found no online accounts of women from other sects vanishing.

The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria told Reuters it is investigating the disappearances and alleged abductions of Alawite women following a spike in reports this year.

The commission, set up in 2011 to probe rights violations after the civil war broke out, will report to the UN Human Rights Council once the investigations are concluded, a spokesperson said.

Suleiman’s family borrowed from friends and neighbors to scrape together her $15,000 ransom, which they transferred to three money-transfer accounts in the Turkish city of Izmir on May 27 and 28 in 30 transfers ranging from $300 to $700, a close relative told Reuters, sharing the transaction receipts.

Once all money was delivered as instructed, the abductor and intermediary ceased all contact, with their phones turned off, the relative said. Suleiman’s family still have no idea what’s become of her.

Detailed interviews with the families of 16 of the missing women and girls found that seven of them are believed to have been kidnapped, with their relatives receiving demands for ransoms ranging from $1,500 to $100,000.

Three of the abductees — including Suleiman — sent their families text or voice messages saying they’d been taken out of the country.

There has been no word on the fate of the other nine. Eight of the 16 missing Alawites are under the age of 18, their families said.

Reuters reviewed about 20 text messages, calls and videos from the abductees and their alleged captors, as well as receipts of some ransom transfers, though it was unable to verify all parts of the families’ accounts or determine who might have targeted the women or their motives.

All 33 women disappeared in the governorates of Tartous, Latakia and Hama, which have large Alawite populations. Nearly half have since returned home, though all of the women and their families declined to comment about the circumstances, with most citing security fears.

Most of the families interviewed by Reuters said they felt police didn’t take their cases seriously when they reported their loved ones missing or abducted, and that authorities failed to investigate thoroughly.

The Syrian government didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article.

Ahmed Mohammed Khair, a media officer for the governor of Tartous, dismissed any suggestion that Alawites were being targeted and said most cases of missing women were down to family disputes or personal reasons rather than abductions, without presenting evidence to support this.

“Women are either forced into marrying someone they won’t want to marry so they run away or sometimes they want to draw attention by disappearing,” he added and warned that “unverified allegations” could create panic and discord and destabilize security.

A media officer for Latakia governorate echoed Khair’s comments, saying that in many cases, women elope with their lovers and families fabricate abduction stories to avoid the social stigma.

The media officer of Hama governorate declined to comment.

A member of a fact-finding committee set up by new Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa to investigate the mass killings of Alawites in coastal areas in March, declined to comment on the cases of missing women.

Al-Sharaa denounced the sectarian bloodshed as a threat to his mission to unite the ravaged nation and has promised to punish those responsible, including those affiliated to the government if necessary.

Grabbed on her way to school
Syrian rights advocate Yamen Hussein, who has been tracking the disappearances of women this year, said most had taken place in the wake of the March violence. As far as he knew, only Alawites had been targeted and the perpetrators’ identities and motives remain unknown, he said.

He described a widespread feeling of fear among Alawites, who adhere to an offshoot of Shiite Islam and account for about a tenth of Syria’s predominantly Sunni population.

Some women and girls in Tartous, Latakia and Hama are staying away from school or college because they fear being targeted, Hussein said.

“For sure, we have a real issue here where Alawite women are being targeted with abductions,” he added. “Targeting women of the defeated party is a humiliation tactic that was used in the past by the Assad regime.”

Thousands of Alawites have been forced from their homes in Damascus, while many have been dismissed from their jobs and faced harassment at checkpoints from Sunni fighters affiliated to the government.

The interviews with families of missing women showed that most of them vanished in broad daylight, while running errands or traveling on public transport.
Zeinab Ghadir is among the youngest.

The 17-year-old was abducted on her way to school in the Latakia town of Al-Hanadi on February 27, according to a family member who said her suspected kidnapper contacted them by text message to warn them not to post images of the girl online.

“I don’t want to see a single picture or, I swear to God, I will send you her blood,” the man said in a text message sent from the girl’s phone on the same day she disappeared.

The teenage girl made a brief phone call home, saying she didn’t know where she had been taken and that she had stomach pain, before the line cut out, her relative said. The family has no idea what has happened to her.

Khozama Nayef was snatched on March 18 in rural Hama by a group of five men who drugged her to knock her out for a few hours while they spirited her away, a close relative told Reuters, citing the mother-of-five’s own testimony when she was returned.

The 35-year-old spent 15 days in captivity while her abductors negotiated with the family who eventually paid $1,500 dollars to secure her release, according to the family member who said when she returned home she had a mental breakdown.

Days after Nayef was taken, 29-year-old Doaa Abbas was seized on her doorstep by a group of attackers who dragged her into a car waiting outside and sped off, according to a family member who witnessed the abduction in the Hama town of Salhab.

The relative, who didn’t see how many men took Abbas or whether they were armed, said he tried to follow on his motorbike but lost sight of the car.

Three Alawites reported missing by their families on social media this year, who are not included in the 33 cases identified by Reuters, have since resurfaced and publicly denied they were abducted.

One of them, a 16-year-old girl from Latakia, released a video online saying she ran away of her own accord to marry a Sunni man. Her family contradicted her story though, telling Reuters that she had been abducted and forced to marry the man, and that security authorities had ordered her to say she had gone willingly to protect her kidnappers.

Reuters was unable to verify either account. A Syrian government spokesperson and Latakian authorities didn’t respond to queries about it.

The two other Alawites who resurfaced, a 23-year-old woman and a girl of 12, told Arabic TV channels that they had traveled of their own volition to the cities of Aleppo and Damascus, respectively, though the former said she ended up being beaten up by a man in an apartment before escaping.

Dark memories of Daesh
Syria’s Alawites dominated the country’s political and military elite for decades under the Assad dynasty. Bashar Assad’s sudden exit in December saw the ascendancy of a new government led by HTS, a Sunni group that emerged from an organization once affiliated to Al-Qaeda.

The new government is striving to integrate dozens of former rebel factions, including some foreign fighters, into its security forces to fill a vacuum left after the collapse of Assad’s defense apparatus.

Several of the families of misrsing women said they and many others in their community dreaded a nightmare scenario where Alawites suffered similar fates to those inflicted on the Yazidi religious minority by Daesh about a decade ago.

Daesh forced thousands of Yazidi women into sexual slavery during a reign of terror that saw its commanders claim a caliphate encompassing large parts of Iraq and Syria, according to the UN

A host of dire scenarios are torturing the minds of the family of Nagham Shadi, an Alawite woman who vanished this month, her father told Reuters.

The 23-year-old left their house in the village of al Bayadiyah in Hama on June 2 to buy milk and never came back, Shadi Aisha said, describing an agonizing wait for any word about the fate of his daughter.

Aisha said his family had been forced from their previous home in a nearby village on March 7 during the anti-Alawite violence.

“What do we do? We leave it to God.”