Al-Qaeda terrorists seek to swap abducted UN workers for prisoners in Aden

An Al-Qaeda logo is seen on a street sign in the town of Jaar in southern Abyan province, Yemen, June 15, 2012. (AP Photo)
Short Url
Updated 14 February 2022
Follow

Al-Qaeda terrorists seek to swap abducted UN workers for prisoners in Aden

  • Security official says negotiations are underway but a military operation will be launched if the workers are not freed
  • Yemeni minister accuses Houthis of ‘behaving like other terrorist organizations … executing Iranian agendas in Yemen’

AL-MUKALLA: The suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists holding five kidnapped UN workers are seeking to swap them for prisoners detained by the Yemeni government in Aden, according to a local security official.

The abductions happened on Friday when the workers — four Yemenis and a foreigner — traveling in two armored vehicles and with a military escort were confronted by a group of armed men in the Moudia district of Abyan as they were heading back to Aden from a field visit.

On Monday, a senior security official told Arab News that the militants had issued their demands for the release of the workers and that the governor of Abyan, Abu Baker Hussein Salem, had asked local tribal figures to talk to them.

“These are mercenaries known to be affiliated with Al-Qaeda. Security services (in Abyan) killed one of their leaders six months ago,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

“There are negotiations with the terrorists. We do not want to use force in order not to harm the hostages,” he said, but added that a military operation would be initiated if the captors refused to release the workers.

Al-Sharae newspaper reported on Sunday that two people representing the militants said the UN workers would be freed in return for the release of the prisoners in Aden and payment of a SR1 million ($266,000) ransom.

The governor of Abyan formed a committee of four officials, including directors of Moudia and Al-Wadhea, to talk to them, the report said.

Russell Geekie, a senior communications adviser to the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, confirmed the kidnappings and said the UN was in touch with local officials to help get the workers back to safety.

“The United Nations is in close contact with the authorities to secure their release,” he told Arab News in an email statement.

Meanwhile, Yemen’s Information, Culture and Tourism Minister Muammar Al-Eryani on Monday accused the Iran-backed Houthis of turning civilian facilities in areas under their control, including Sanaa airport, into military bases for assembling and launching missiles, and renewed calls for the movement to be blacklisted.

Speaking to reporters in the central city of Marib along with the army’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Sagheer bin Aziz, Al-Eryani said the Houthis had rejected efforts to end the war, threatened maritime navigation, mounted deadly strikes on civilian sites in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and ignored local and international warnings over the decaying oil tanker in the Red Sea.

Houthi attacks and military operations had increased fourfold since February last year when the US removed the group’s name from its list of foreign terrorist organizations, he said.

“Al-Houthi considered the silence of the international community a green light for the escalation. It is time for the international community to support the government’s efforts to restore the state and bring down the coup,” he said, adding that the Houthis were behaving like other terrorist organizations and executing Iranian agendas in Yemen.

“We reiterate our call to the international community and the UN Security Council that they must include the Houthi militia and its leadership on the lists of terrorists and prosecute them in international courts as war criminals,” he said.

Bin Aziz added that Yemen’s armed forces were determined to defeat the Houthis militarily after peaceful efforts to convince them to stop fighting had failed.

“They will only submit to peace by force,” he said.

The army chief also repeated the accusation that Iran had provided the Houthis with the “tools of death,” adding: “Iran has put all its weight, industrial capabilities and experts into this war.”


Israel insists on right to act against Hezbollah in any deal to end fighting

Updated 9 sec ago
Follow

Israel insists on right to act against Hezbollah in any deal to end fighting

Lebanon’s government is likely to view any such demand as an infringement on its sovereignty
Hochstein told reporters the talks had made “additional progress”

BEIRUT: Israel’s defense minister says his country insists on the right to act militarily against Hezbollah in any agreement to end the fighting in Lebanon.
Lebanon’s government is likely to view any such demand as an infringement on its sovereignty, complicating efforts to end more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah that erupted into all-out war in September.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement Wednesday that “the condition for any political settlement in Lebanon is the preservation of the intelligence capability and the preservation of the (Israeli military’s) right to act and protect the citizens of Israel from Hezbollah.”
Lebanese officials mediating between Israel and Hezbollah have called for a return to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between the sides.
It calls for Hezbollah militants and Israeli forces to withdraw from a buffer zone in southern Lebanon patrolled by UN peacekeepers and Lebanese troops.
US envoy Amos Hochstein, who has spent months trying to broker a ceasefire, held a second round of talks on Wednesday with Lebanon’s parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, an ally of Hezbollah who has been mediating on their behalf.
Hochstein told reporters the talks had made “additional progress,” and that he would be heading to Israel “to try to bring this to a close, if we can.” He declined to say what the sticking points are.
Israeli strikes and combat in Lebanon have killed more than 3,500 people and wounded 15,000, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. The war has displaced nearly 1.2 million people, or a quarter of Lebanon’s population.
On the Israeli side, 87 soldiers and 50 civilians, including some foreign farmworkers, have been killed by attacks involving rockets, drones and missiles. Hezbollah began firing on Israel the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack triggered the war in Gaza.
That attack killed some 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, and another 250 were abducted. Around 100 hostages remain inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed nearly 44,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Lebanese army said in a statement a soldier was killed by an Israeli airstrike that hit his vehicle on the road linking Burj Al-Muluk and Qalaa in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military said it was looking into reports.
The night before, three soldiers were killed by an airstrike that targeted an army post in the town of Sarafand, near the coastal city of Saida.
Wissam Khalifa, a resident of Sarafand who lives next to the army post and was injured in the strike, said he was shocked that it was targeted.
“It’s a safe residential neighborhood. There is nothing here at all” that would present a target, he said. “Regarding the martyred soldiers, I don’t even know if there was a gun in the center. Why did this strike happen? We have no idea.”
The Lebanese army has not been an active participant in the fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah over the past 13 months, but more than 40 soldiers have been killed in the conflict.
Altogether, more than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since Oct. 8, 2023, the vast majority of them in the past two months.

US envoy to travel to Israel in bid to seal Hezbollah ceasefire

Updated 27 min 29 sec ago
Follow

US envoy to travel to Israel in bid to seal Hezbollah ceasefire

BEIRUT: US envoy Amos Hochstein said he will travel to Israel on Wednesday to try to secure a ceasefire ending the war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah group after declaring additional progress in talks in Beirut.
Hochstein, who arrived a day earlier in Beirut, said he saw a “real opportunity” to end the conflict after the Lebanese government and Hezbollah agreed to a US ceasefire proposal, although with some comments.
“The meeting today built on the meeting yesterday, and made additional progress,” Hochstein said after his second meeting with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, endorsed by the Iran-backed Hezbollah to negotiate.
“So I will travel from here in a couple hours to Israel to try to bring this to a close if we can,” Hochstein said.
The diplomacy aims to end a conflict that has inflicted massive devastation in Lebanon since Israel went on the offensive against Hezbollah in September, mounting airstrikes across wide parts of the country and sending in troops.
Israel says its aim is to secure the return home of tens of thousands of people evacuated from its north due to rocket attacks by Hezbollah, which opened fire in support of Hamas at the start of the Gaza war in October 2023.
Hezbollah, still reeling from the killing of its leader Hassan Nasrallah and other commanders, has kept up rocket fire into Israel, including targeting Tel Aviv this week. Its fighters are battling Israeli troops on the ground in the south.

Although diplomacy to end the Gaza war has largely stalled, the Biden administration aims to seal a ceasefire in the parallel conflict in Lebanon before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.
“We are going to work with the incoming administration. We’re already going to be discussing this with them. They will be fully aware of what we’re doing,” Hochstein said.


Lebanese army says soldier killed by Israeli fire

Updated 20 November 2024
Follow

Lebanese army says soldier killed by Israeli fire

  • South Lebanon and the capital have seen heavy strikes in recent days

BEIRUT: The Lebanese army said Israeli fire killed a soldier on Wednesday, a day after it said three other personnel died in a strike on their position in south Lebanon.
South Lebanon has seen intense fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militants whose group holds sway in the area.
A soldier “died of his wounds sustained due to the Israel army targeting of an army vehicle” in south Lebanon, a statement on X said, after reporting two personnel wounded in the incident near Qlayaa in south Lebanon.
On Tuesday, the military said three soldiers were killed when “the Israeli enemy targeted an army position in the town of Sarafand,” where the health ministry said eight people were wounded.
AFP images showed destruction at the site in Sarafand on the Mediterranean coast, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the southern border, with a concrete structure destroyed and a vehicle among the debris.

Israel army says hit over 100 ‘terror targets’ in past day

The Israeli military on Wednesday said it struck more than 100 “terror targets” in Lebanon over the past day and had “eliminated” two Hezbollah commanders at the weekend.
The targets included “launchers, weapons storage facilities, command centers, and military structures,” the army said in a statement.
The announcement came as US envoy Amos Hochstein was in Lebanon, seeking to hammer out a truce between Israel and Hezbollah.
The military also said “on Sunday, the (air force) eliminated the commanders of Hezbollah’s anti-tank missile and operations unit in the coastal sector” who were “responsible for terror attacks against Israeli civilians.”
The army added that its troops continued to conduct “limited, localized, targeted raids” in southern Lebanon.
Since September 23, Israel has ramped up its bombing campaign in Lebanon, later sending in ground troops, after almost a year of cross-border exchanges begun by Hezbollah in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas.
South Lebanon and the capital have seen heavy strikes in recent days, though the situation was calmer in Beirut on Tuesday and Wednesday, with US envoy Amos Hochstein visiting for truce talks.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported Israeli shelling and air strikes in south Lebanon overnight and on Wednesday, saying Israeli troops were seeking to advance further near the town of Khiam.
Hezbollah on Tuesday said it had attacked Israeli troops near the flashpoint border town.
The NNA also said that Israel forces were “attempting to advance from the Kfarshuba hills... to open up a new front under the cover of fire and artillery shells and air strikes.”
“Violent clashes are taking place” between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, it added.
Hezbollah said it carried out several attacks on Israeli troops near the border Wednesday.
 


Syria war monitor says 4 fighters dead in Israeli attack on Palmyra

Updated 20 November 2024
Follow

Syria war monitor says 4 fighters dead in Israeli attack on Palmyra

  • State news agency SANA said an “Israeli attack... targeted residential buildings and the industrial area”

Beirut: A war monitor said Israeli strikes on central Syria’s Palmyra on Wednesday killed four pro-Iran fighters, while Syrian state media reported an unspecified number of wounded in the attack.
“Four non-Syrian fighters from pro-Iran groups were killed and six others including civilians were wounded in a provisional toll of the Israeli strikes” on Palmyra, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The strikes targeted “a warehouse in the industrial area and a restaurant and buildings near the ancient city of Palmyra,” the Britain-based Observatory added.
State news agency SANA said an “Israeli attack... targeted residential buildings and the industrial area” of the city, renowned for its ancient ruins.
State television reported unspecified “wounded due to the Israeli attack that targeted the city of Palmyra.”
Since the civil war erupted in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria, mainly targeting the army and Iran-backed armed groups, including Hezbollah.
The Israeli military has intensified its strikes since almost a year of hostilities with Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon escalated into all-out war in late September.
Israel rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria, but has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran to expand its presence there.


Erdogan says Turkiye prepared if US withdraws from Syria

Updated 20 November 2024
Follow

Erdogan says Turkiye prepared if US withdraws from Syria

ISTANBUL: President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkiye is prepared if the United States decides to withdraw troops from northern Syria, broadcaster CNN Turk and other media cited him as saying on Wednesday.
In an interview with reporters on his way back from the G20 summit in Brazil, Erdogan said Turkiye’s security is paramount and it is holding talks with Russia on the issue of Syria.