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
Macron announces new Lebanon ‘reconstruction’ conference in Paris
“The international community must prepare for massive support to the reconstruction of infrastructure“
BEIRUT: France’s President Emmanuel Macron Friday announced that Paris would in coming weeks host an international reconstruction conference after a war between militant group Hezbollah and Israel.
After more than two years of a political vacuum at the top of the small Mediterranean country, Joseph Aoun was elected president on January 9 and chose Nawaf Salam as prime minister designate.
“Since January 9, in the middle of winter, spring has sprung,” Macron said at a joint press conference with Aoun.
“You are this hope,” he said, referring to Aoun and Salam.
The new prime minister faces the monumental task of forming a government to oversee reconstruction after a November ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war, and enact reforms to lift the country out of its worst economic crisis in history.
“As soon as the president (Aoun) comes to Paris in a few weeks’ time, we will organize around him an international reconstruction conference to drum up funding,” Macron said.
“The international community must prepare for massive support to the reconstruction of infrastructure.”
Under the ceasefire deal, the Lebanese army must deploy alongside UN peacekeepers in the south of Lebanon as the Israeli army withdraws by January 26.
At the same time, Hezbollah is required to pull its forces north of the Litani River, some 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border, and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure it has in the country’s south.
With just over a week to go until the cut-off date, Macron called for accelerated implementation of the truce.
“There have been results... but they must be accelerated and long-lasting. There needs to be complete withdrawal of Israeli forces, and the Lebanese army must hold total monopoly of any weapons” in south Lebanon, he said.
A committee composed of Israeli, Lebanese, French and US delegates, alongside a representative from UNIFIL, has been tasked with monitoring the implementation of the ceasefire deal.
EU’s Kallas says talks under way to revive Rafah border mission
- The mission operated for only a year and a half before it was suspended when Hamas militants took control of the Gaza Strip
- The EU is “in discussions about redeploying our monitoring mission to Rafah to ensure the stability at the border, so we have it ready,” Kallas told reporters
BRUSSELS: The European Union is in talks to revive a civilian mission to monitor the border crossing between Gaza and Egypt at Rafah following the announcement of the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said.
A civilian EU mission to help monitor the Rafah crossing was set up under agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 2005, part of international help with peace efforts at a time when Israel had pulled troops and settlers from Gaza.
But the mission operated for only a year and a half before it was suspended when Hamas militants took control of the Gaza Strip and drove out the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority.
Kallas met with the Palestinian Authority’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa in Brussels on Friday morning and spoke on the phone with Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar.
The EU is “in discussions about redeploying our monitoring mission to Rafah to ensure the stability at the border, so we have it ready,” Kallas told reporters in Brussels.
Kallas said redeploying would require invitations from Israel and the Palestinian Authority as well as a cooperation agreement with Egypt. She said the mission now had ten international staff and eight locals on standby.
“We will also be ready to assist in reconstruction and recovery,” she said.
Kallas said the EU was committed to a two-state solution to the broader Israel-Palestinian conflict.
“Of course lasting peace means compromises on both sides,” she said. “I think there is a chance to prevent further loss of life with this ceasefire.”
Aid agencies ready Gaza push but warn of mammoth obstacles
- On the ground in the territory, aid workers worry nothing will be enough to meet the need
- World Food Programme has enough food for one million people ‘waiting outside Gaza or on its way’
CAIRO: An Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal expected to take effect on Sunday has sparked hope for life-saving aid to reach Palestinians, but aid agencies warn of obstacles from destroyed infrastructure, massive need and collapsed law and order.
Announcing the truce, United States President Joe Biden said on Wednesday it would “surge much needed humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians.”
The United Nations’ humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher called it “a moment of hope and opportunity” but said “we should be under no illusions how tough it will still be to get support to survivors.”
On the ground in the territory, where nearly all 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once, aid workers worry nothing will be enough to meet the need.
“Everything has been destroyed. Children are on the streets. You can’t pinpoint just one priority,” Doctors Without Borders (MSF) coordinator Amande Bazerolle said by phone from Gaza.
Speaking from the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, Mohammed Al-Khatib, of Medical Aid for Palestinians, said local aid workers haven’t stopped for 15 months even though they themselves are displaced.
“Everyone is exhausted,” he said.
In the hunger-stricken makeshift shelters set up in former schools, bombed-out houses and cemeteries, hundreds of thousands lack even plastic sheeting to protect from winter rains and biting winds, Gavin Kelleher, of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said.
Even if the bombs stop, agencies like his have to focus on the basics of emergency response, including bringing in “tarpaulins, rope and fixtures to close gaping holes” in buildings.
“At least until we stop seeing children dying of hypothermia,” he said via text message from Gaza.
By last week, hypothermia had killed at least eight people – four newborns, three infants and one adult – according to a health ministry toll used by the World Health Organization.
On Wednesday, Egypt’s state-linked Al-Qahera News reported coordination was underway to reopen the Rafah crossing on the Gaza border. It was one of the main humanitarian entry points but has been closed since Israeli forces seized the Palestinian side in May.
The truce is based on a plan Biden presented in mid-2024 that foresaw a surge in aid to 600 trucks per day, or more than eight times the December average reported by the United Nations.
The World Food Programme said Thursday it had enough food for one million people “waiting outside Gaza or on its way.”
On the Egyptian side of the border, a source in the Egyptian Red Crescent said up to 1,000 trucks are waiting “for their entry into Gaza.”
But with air strikes continuing to pound the territory, where aid groups and the UN have regularly accused Israel of impeding aid flows – which Israeli denies – aid workers were skeptical.
MSF’s Bazerolle said the promise of hundreds of trucks a day “is not even feasible technically.”
“Since Rafah has been destroyed, the infrastructure is not there to be able to cope with that level of logistics,” she explained, with bombs audible in the background.
Aid that does arrive is subject to looting by both armed gangs and desperate civilians.
“The Israelis have targeted the police, so there’s no one to protect the shipments” from looting, which Bazerolle said will continue “as long as there’s not enough aid entering.”
After more than a year of the “systematic dismantling of the rule of law” in Gaza, NRC’s Kelleher called for “the resumption of a Palestinian civilian police force.”
The situation is especially dire in northern Gaza.
Bazerolle, who says MSF missions in the area have been targeted by Israel, says the group hopes to send teams to the north “to at least treat patients where they are,” in the absence of hospitals.
According to the WHO, only one hospital, Al-Awda, is partially functioning in the north.
WHO’s Rik Peeperkorn said that, in addition to hospital capacity, his agency will focus on “the very basic things” including water, electricity and waste management systems in Gaza.
Still, the displaced will hope to head back – including Khatib himself – if the truce holds.
Many, he said, “will return to find their entire neighborhoods destroyed” and without food or shelter.
“People aren’t even talking about rebuilding their houses, but just the most basic essential needs,” he continued.
“We’re closing one chapter of suffering and opening a new one,” he predicted, before adding: “At least there is some hope of the bloodshed ending.”
WHO upbeat on scaling up aid under Gaza ceasefire terms
- The WHO plans to bring in an unspecified number of prefabricated hospitals to support Gaza’s decimated health sector, he added
GENEVA: A World Health Organization official said on Friday that it should be possible to scale up aid imports into Gaza massively to around 600 trucks a day under the terms of a ceasefire deal.
“I think the possibility is very much there and specifically when other crossings will be opened up,” Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, told a Geneva press briefing.
The WHO plans to bring in an unspecified number of prefabricated hospitals to support Gaza’s decimated health sector, he added.
First Syria visit by an EU official since Assad’s fall
- Syrian state news agency SANA published images of Lahbib with the country’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa
Damascus: EU crisis management chief Hadja Lahbib on Friday became the first European Union official to visit Syria since Islamist-led forces toppled longtime ruler Bashar Assad last month.
Syrian state news agency SANA published images of Lahbib with the country’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa, reporting he was meeting with “a delegation from the European Commission” headed by the EU official.
