AL-MUKALLA: The leader of Yemen’s Houthi militia, Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, pledged on Sunday to defend Iran if it was attacked by Israel and to continue firing missiles and drones at Israel in support of the Palestinians and Lebanese. 

Speaking on the eve of the first anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Al-Houthi vowed to escalate attacks on international ships while continuing to fire missiles and drones at Israel, claiming that his forces had fired 1000 ballistic missiles, drones and drone boats at 193 ships and Israel since the start of their campaign in November.

“On the Yemeni front, we maintain our principled, humanitarian, moral, religious and faithful position in support of the Palestinian people, their mujahideen, our brothers in Lebanon, the Hezbollah mujahideen, the Islamic Republic of Iran, our brothers in Iraq and the nation’s free people,” he said, adding that 774 US and UK strikes on Yemeni areas under the militia’s control had killed 82 people and injured 340 others. He also urged his supporters to demonstrate on Monday in the streets of Sanaa and other Yemeni cities under their control in support of Lebanon, Palestine and Iran. 

Al-Houthi’s speech came two days after the US Central Command launched a series of strikes on “Houthi offensive military capabilities” in Sanaa, Thamar, Hodeidah and Bayda, the latest round of strikes against the Houthis in Yemen for their ship attacks.

Since November, the Houthis have captured a commercial ship and its crew, sunk two more and set fire to several others while firing hundreds of ballistic missiles, drones and drone boats at more than 100 commercial and naval ships in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. 

The Houthis claim that they only target Israel-linked ships or ships visiting Israeli ports to pressure Israel to end its war in the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

This comes as Yemeni government officials said on Sunday that the Yemeni government’s efforts to evacuate stranded Yemeni nationals from Lebanon have been suspended after an Israeli airstrike hit Lebanon’s Masnaa border crossing with Syria, cutting off a vital artery for thousands of people fleeing Israel’s devastating air bombardment of Lebanon.

The Yemeni Embassy in Lebanon recently requested that Yemenis living in Lebanon apply for a transit visit from Syria before proceeding to Lebanon’s border crossing with Syria and that it would arrange transportation to transfer them from Lebanon to Syria and then to Jordan before taking Yemenia Airways flights from Amman to Yemeni airports.

Stranded Yemenis in Lebanon rejected the Yemeni embassy’s proposal to evacuate them by land.

They demanded that their government evacuate them by air from Beirut on Yemenia Airways or by sea.

Mushtaq Anaam, a Yemeni national living in Beirut’s Cola, told Arab News on Sunday that the Yemeni government should evacuate them by air, just as the Tunisian government did by sending a flight to evacuate stranded Tunisians and their families, and providing them with lodging. Anaam added that their lives in Lebanon had deteriorated as apartment rentals had risen dramatically in recent days.

“The financial situation of those stranded has deteriorated significantly, with people unable to afford transportation and rent,” he said. 

“Rents have risen by 200 percent, and landlords ask for three months’ rent in advance. Except for Yemen, all countries are nearing the end of their citizens’ evacuations,” Anaam said.

Yemeni media reported that a Yemeni national, Ali A-Hajj, from Yemen’s Ibb province, and his Lebanese mother, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home in Lebanon’s West Bekaa on Friday.    

Meanwhile, Yemeni Information Minister Muammar Al-Eryani said on Saturday that the Houthis abducted a Yemeni content creator and media activist, Abdul Rahman Al-Baydani, from his home in the province of Ibb, due to online criticism of the Houthis, as the Yemeni militia intensifies their crackdown on Yemenis who criticize them or celebrate the 1962 revolution.

“These abductions are just a new episode in the series of systematic violations carried out by the Houthi militia against every free voice in the areas under its control, who exercise their right to report the facts and expose the militia’s oppressive practices,” Al-Eryani said in a post on X.

BEIRUT: Israeli air attacks battered Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight and early on Sunday, the most intense bombardment of the Lebanese capital since Israel sharply escalated its campaign against Iran-backed group Hezbollah last month.
During the night, the blasts sent booms across Beirut and sparked flashes of red and white for nearly 30 minutes visible from several kilometers away.
It was the single biggest attack of Israel’s assault on Beirut so far, witnesses and military analysts on local TV channels said.
On Sunday a grey haze hung over the city and rubble was strewn across streets in the southern suburbs, while smoke columns rose over the area.
“Last night was the most violence of all the previous nights. Buildings were shaking around us and at first I thought it was an earthquake. There were dozens of strikes — we couldn’t count them all — and the sounds were deafening,” said Hanan Abdullah, a resident of the Burj Al-Barajneh area in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Videos posted on social media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed fresh damage to the highway that runs from Beirut airport through its southern suburbs into downtown.
Israel said its air force had “conducted a series of targeted strikes on a number of weapons storage facilities and terrorist infrastructure sites belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization in the area of Beirut.”
Lebanese authorities did not immediately say what the missiles had hit or what damage they caused.
This weekend’s intense bombardment came just ahead of the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on southern Israel in which some 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli figures.
The target of Israel’s airstrikes across Lebanon and its ground invasion in the south of the country is the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, Iran’s chief ally in the region. The assault has killed hundreds of people including civilians and has displaced 1.2 million, Lebanese officials say.
For days Israel has bombed the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh — considered a stronghold for Hezbollah but also home to thousands of ordinary Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian refugees — killing its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Sept. 27.
A Lebanese security source said on Saturday that Hashem Safieddine, Nasrallah’s potential successor, had been out of contact since Friday, after an Israeli airstrike on Thursday near the city’s international airport that was reported to have targeted him.
Israel continues to bomb the area of the strike, preventing rescue workers from reaching it, Lebanese security sources said.
Hezbollah has not commented on Safieddine.
His loss would be another blow to the group and its patron Iran. Israeli strikes across the region in the past year, sharply accelerated in recent weeks, have devastated Hezbollah’s leadership.

Gaza war
Israel’s war in Gaza, launched after the Oct. 7 attacks and aimed at eliminating Hamas, another Iran-backed group, has killed nearly 42,000 people, Palestinian authorities say. The coastal enclave lies in ruins.
At least 26 people were killed and 93 others wounded when Israeli airstrikes hit a mosque and a school sheltering displaced people in the Gaza Strip early on Sunday, the Hamas-run Gaza government media office said.
Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel a day after the Oct. 7 attacks and after Israel had begun bombing Gaza, saying it was acting in solidarity with the Palestinian group.
Cross-border fire continued between Israel and Hezbollah for months, but were mostly limited to the Israel-Lebanon border area before the recent upsurge.
Israel says it stepped up its assault on Hezbollah last month to enable the safe return of tens of thousands of citizens to homes in northern Israel, bombarded by the group since last Oct. 8.
Israeli authorities said on Saturday that nine Israeli soldiers had been killed in southern Lebanon so far.
In northern Israel, air raid sirens sounded on Sunday and the Israeli military said it had intercepted rockets fired from Lebanese territory.
Iran has signalled it does not want a direct war with Israel but has launched responses on occasion to Israeli attacks. It fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday that did little damage.
Israel has been weighing options for its response.