DUBAI: A mysterious airstrip being built on a remote island in Yemen is nearing completion, satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press show, one of several built in a nation mired in a stalemated war threatening to reignite.
The airstrip on Abd Al-Kuri Island, which rises out of the Indian Ocean near the mouth of the Gulf of Aden, could provide a key landing zone for military operations patrolling that waterway. That could be useful as commercial shipping through the Gulf and Red Sea – a key route for cargo and energy shipments heading to Europe – has halved under attacks by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi militias. The area also has seen weapons smuggling from Iran to the militias.
While the Houthis have linked their campaign to the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, experts worry a ceasefire in that conflict may not be enough to see the militias halt a campaign that’s drawn them global attention. Meanwhile, the Houthis have lobbed repeated attacks at Israel, as well as US warships operating in the Red Sea, raising fears that one may make it through and endanger the lives of American service members.
A battlefield miscalculation by Yemen’s many adversarial parties, new fatal attacks on Israel or a deadly assault on an American warship easily could shatter the country’s relative calm. And it remains unclear just how President-elect Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated on Monday, will handle the emboldened militia group.
“The Houthis feed off war – war is good for them,” said Wolf-Christian Paes, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies who studies Yemen. “Finally they can live up to their slogan, which famously, of course, declares, ‘Death to America, death to the Jews.’ They see themselves as being in this epic battle against their archenemies and from their view, they’re winning.”
Satellite images show airstrip nearly complete
Satellite photos taken Jan. 7 by Planet Labs PBC for the AP show trucks and other heavy equipment on the north-south runway built into Abd Al-Kuri, which is about 35 kilometers in length and about 5 kilometers at its widest point.
The runway has been paved, with the designation markings “18” and “36” to the airstrip’s north and south respectively. As of Jan. 7, there was still a segment missing from the 2.4-kilometer-long runway that’s 45-meters wide. Trucks could be seen grading and laying asphalt over the missing 290-meter segment.
Once completed, the runway’s length would allow private jets and other aircraft to land there, though likely not the largest commercial aircraft or heavy bombers given its length.
While within Houthi drone and missile range, the distance of Abd Al-Kuri from mainland Yemen means “there’s no threat of the Houthis getting on a pickup truck or a technical and going to seize it,” said Yemen expert Mohammed Al-Basha of the Basha Report risk advisory firm.
The United Nations’ Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organization, which assigns its own set of airport codes for airfields around the world, had no information about the airstrip on Abd Al-Kuri, spokesman William Raillant-Clark said. Yemen, as a member state to ICAO, should provide information about the airfield to the organization. Nearby Socotra Island already has an airport declared to the ICAO.
It’s not the only airfield to see an expansion in recent years. In Mocha on the Red Sea, a project to extend that city’s airport now allows it to land far larger aircraft. The airfield also sits on a similar north-south path as the Abd Al-Kuri airstrip and is roughly the same length.
Other satellite photos from Planet Labs show yet another unclaimed runway currently under construction just south of Mocha near Dhubab, a coastal town in Yemen’s Taiz governorate. An image taken by Planet for the AP on Thursday showed the runway fully built, though no markings were painted on it.
Smuggling route passes by the island
A new airport on Abd Al-Kuri could provide a new, secluded landing zone for surveillance flights around Socotra Island. That could be vital to interdict weapons smuggling from Iran to the Houthis, who remain under a UN arms embargo.
A report to the UN Security Council said a January 2024 weapons seizure by the US military took place off Socotra near Abd Al-Kuri. That seizure, which saw two US Navy SEALs lost at sea and presumed killed, involved a traditional dhow vessel that US prosecutors say was involved in multiple smuggling trips on behalf of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard to the Houthis.
Disrupting that weapons route, as well as the ongoing attacks by the US, Israel and others on the Houthis, likely have contributed to the slowing pace of the militias’ attacks in recent months. The US and its partners alone have struck the Houthis over 260 times, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Next week, Trump will be the one to decide what happens to that campaign. He has experience already with how difficult fighting in Yemen can be – his first military action in his first term in 2017 saw a Navy SEAL killed in a raid on a suspected Al-Qaeda compound. The raid also killed more than a dozen civilians, including an 8-year-old girl.
Trump may reapply a foreign terrorist organization designation on the Houthis that Biden revoked, a reimposition that the UAE backs. Marco Rubio, who Trump has nominated to be secretary of state, mentioned the Houthis several times when testifying Wednesday at his Senate confirmation hearing alongside what he described as threats from Iran and its allies.
Any US move could escalate the war, even with the Houthi’s enigmatic supreme leader, Abdul-Malik Al-Houthi, pledging Thursday night to halt the militias’ attacks if a ceasefire deal is reached in Gaza.
“I don’t see a way in 2025 that we have a de-escalation with the Houthis,” said Al-Basha, the Yemen expert. “The situation in Yemen is very tense. An outbreak in the war could be a reality in the next few months. I don’t foresee the status quo continuing.”
Mysterious airstrip appears on a Yemeni island as Houthi attacks threaten region
https://arab.news/njg8w
Mysterious airstrip appears on a Yemeni island as Houthi attacks threaten region
- Airstrip on Abd Al-Kuri Island could provide a key landing zone for military operations patrolling key waterway
- Commercial shipping through the Gulf and Red Sea has halved under attacks by Yemen’s Houthi militia
Israel is trying to destabilize Lebanon and Syria, Arab League chief laments
- Israel’s resumption of targeted assassinations in Lebanon is an unacceptable and condemnable breach of the ceasefire agreement it signed with Lebanon late last year, Aboul Gheit said in a statement
CAIRO: Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Saturday accused Israel of trying to destabilize Syria and Lebanon through irresponsible military provocations, in “flagrant disregard for international legal norms.”
In a statement, Aboul Gheit lamented that global inaction has further emboldened the Zionist state.
“(T)he wars waged by Israel on the occupied Palestinian territories, Lebanon, and Syria have entered a new phase of complete recklessness, deliberately violating signed agreements, invading countries, and killing more civilians,” said the statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency.
He said Israel’s resumption of targeted assassinations in Lebanon is an unacceptable and condemnable breach of the ceasefire agreement it signed with Lebanon late last year.
Aboul Gheit suggested that Israel’s actions were driven by narrow domestic agendas at the expense of civilian lives and regional peace.
“It seems that the Israeli war machine does not want to stop as long as the occupation leaders insist on facing their internal crises by exporting them abroad, and this situation has become clear to everyone,” he said.
As per the Gaza Ministry of Health’s count last week, more than 50,000 people have been killed and over 113,200 wounded in Israeli attacks on Palestinian territories in retaliation against the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel.
In Lebanon, war monitors have said at least 3,961 people were killed and at least 16,520, wounded in Israel’s war with the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement from October 8, 2023, to November 26, 2024.
Syria’s new government accused Israel on April 3 of mounting a deadly destabilization campaign after a wave of strikes on military targets, including an airport, and a ground incursion killed 13 people, in the southern province of Daraa.
Syrian government says studying Amnesty report on massacres
Damascus: Syria’s government said late Friday it was “closely following” the findings of a new Amnesty International report urging an investigation into sectarian massacres last month.
Amnesty called on the Syrian government in a report on Thursday to ensure accountability for the massacres targeting the Alawite minority, saying they may constitute war crimes.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor has said security forces and allied groups killed more than 1,700 civilians, mostly Alawites, during the violence.
Interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, whose Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) led the offensive that toppled longtime ruler Bashar Assad in December, has vowed to prosecute those responsible.
In a statement on Friday, the government said it had been “following closely the Amnesty report” and its “preliminary findings.”
“It is up to the Independent National Commission for Investigation and Fact-Finding to evaluate them, in accordance with the mandate, independence, and broad powers granted to it by presidential decree,” it said.
The Syrian authorities have accused armed Assad supporters of sparking the violence by attacking the new security forces.
The government on Friday complained the report failed to note “the broader context of the events.”
It said the violence began with a “premeditated assault” by the “remnants of the previous regime, targeting army and internal security personnel.”
In the ensuing chaos, “acts of retaliation and serious violations occurred,” it said, vowing that these would be investigated and a report issued within a month.
Red Cross warns of continued threat of landmines in Iraq
- Organization calls for greater effort to reduce contamination that spans 2,100 sq. km.
- More than 80 casualties recorded since 2023
LONDON: The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Friday that landmines and explosive remnants of war continue to pose a severe threat in Iraq, contaminating an estimated 2,100 sq. km.
In a statement issued to coincide with the International Day for Mine Awareness, the organization said landmines from past conflicts, including the Iran-Iraq War and the 2014–17 battle against Daesh, remained a major hazard.
The contamination had resulted in civilian casualties, forced displacement, restricted farmland access and slowed reconstruction efforts, it said.
Between 2023 and 2024, the ICRC recorded 78 casualties from landmines and remnants of war in Iraq. Earlier this year, three students were killed in an explosion in Abu Al-Khasib, Basra.
The ICRC has appealed for greater efforts to reduce contamination and support mine-affected communities. Clearance operations continue in cooperation with national authorities and humanitarian partners.
The call for action comes at a time when several NATO member states, namely Poland, Finland and the Baltic states, have signaled their intention to withdraw from the Ottawa Convention, the international treaty banning antipersonnel landmines. They cited the growing military threat from Russia as the reason for reconsidering the ban.
Meanwhile, the US, previously the largest funder of global mine clearance efforts, has cut back support due to a foreign aid review under the Trump administration.
Washington had contributed over $300 million annually, covering 40 percent of total international mine action funding, according to the 2024 Landmine Monitor report, which led to major clearance efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Laos.
A State Department official said last month that the US had restarted some global humanitarian demining programs but provided no details.
Related
Hamas says Israeli offensive in Gaza ‘highly dangerous’ for hostages
- “We have decided not to transfer these (hostages)... but (this situation) is highly dangerous to their lives,” said Abu Obeida
GAZA CITY: Hamas on Friday said Israel’s offensive in Gaza was creating a “highly dangerous” situation for the hostages held there, warning that half of the living captives were in areas where the army had ordered evacuations.
“Half of the living Israeli (hostages) are located in areas that the Israeli occupation army has requested to be evacuated in recent days,” Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, said in a statement. “We have decided not to transfer these (hostages)... but (this situation) is highly dangerous to their lives.”
Kurdish fighters leave northern city in Syria as part of deal with central government
- The fighters left the predominantly Kurdish northern neighborhoods of Sheikh Maksoud and Achrafieh
- The deal is a boost to an agreement reached last month
ALEPPO, Syria: Scores of US-backed Kurdish fighters left two neighborhoods in the Syrian Arab Republic’s northern city of Aleppo Friday as part of a deal with the central government in Damascus, which is expanding its authority in the country.
The fighters left the predominantly Kurdish northern neighborhoods of Sheikh Maksoud and Achrafieh, which had been under the control of Kurdish fighters in Aleppo over the past decade.
The deal is a boost to an agreement reached last month between Syria’s interim government and the Kurdish-led authority that controls the country’s northeast. The deal could eventually lead to the merger of the main US-backed force in Syria into the Syrian army.
The withdrawal of fighters from the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces came a day after dozens of prisoners from both sides were freed in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.
Syria’s state news agency, SANA, reported that government forces were deployed along the road that SDF fighters will use to move between Aleppo and areas east of the Euphrates River, where the Kurdish-led force controls nearly a quarter of Syria.
Sheikh Maksoud and Achrafieh had been under SDF control since 2015 and remained so even when forces of ousted President Bashar Assad captured Aleppo in late 2016. The two neighborhoods remained under SDF control when forces loyal to current interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa captured the city in November, and days later captured the capital, Damascus, removing Assad from power.
After being marginalized for decades under the rule of the Assad family rule, the deal signed last month promises Syria’s Kurds “constitutional rights,” including using and teaching their language, which were banned for decades.
Hundreds of thousands of Kurds, who were displaced during Syria’s nearly 14-year civil war, will return to their homes. Thousands of Kurds living in Syria who have been deprived of nationality for decades under Assad will be given the right of citizenship, according to the agreement.
Kurds made up 10 percent of the country’s prewar population of 23 million. Kurdish leaders say they don’t want full autonomy with their own government and parliament. They want decentralization and room to run their day-to day-affairs.
