You are here

  • Home
  • Houthis attack another ship off Yemen
War on Gaza

Houthis attack another ship off Yemen

Special Houthis attack another ship off Yemen
UKMTO said that the vessel was proceeding to its next port of call. (X:@UKMTO)
Short Url

https://arab.news/mc6ct

Updated 10 July 2024
Saeed Al-Batati
Follow

Houthis attack another ship off Yemen

Houthis attack another ship off Yemen
  • A sea captain reported an explosion near his vessel 40 nautical miles south of Yemen’s Red Sea port city of Mocha and said that the ship and its crew were unhurt
  • Attack came a day after the Houthis targeted a commercial ship destined for Oman in the Indian Ocean, breaking a more than week-long pause in ship attacks
Updated 10 July 2024
Saeed Al-Batati
Follow

AL-MUKALLA: Yemen’s Houthi militia attacked a ship in the Red Sea on Wednesday, less than a day after claiming to have hit three ships in the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, a body that records ship attacks, said that a ship master on Wednesday reported an explosion near his vessel 40 nautical miles south of Yemen’s Red Sea port city of Mocha and that the ship and its crew were unhurt.

“The vessel is proceeding to its next port of call. Authorities continue to monitor the situation. Vessels are advised to transit with caution and report any suspicious activity to UKMTO,” the UK agency said in a statement.

The attack came a day after the Houthis targeted a commercial ship destined for Oman in the Indian Ocean, breaking a more than week-long pause in ship attacks by the militia.

In a televised statement, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said on Tuesday evening that the militia targeted the US-flagged Maersk Sentosa in the Arabian Sea with ballistic and cruise missiles in revenge for US military strikes on Yemeni regions under Houthi control.

Sarea also claimed the Houthis shot explosive-laden drones at the Marthopolis ship in the Arabian Sea, blaming the assault on the ship’s parent company violating the militia’s prohibition on traveling to Israel. Another ship, MSC Patnaree, identified as Israeli by Sarea, was targeted with drones in the Gulf of Aden.

According to marinetraffic.com, the Maersk Sentosa is a container ship flying the US flag that docked at the Omani Salalah port on Tuesday, the Marthopolis is a Malta-flagged container ship sailing from Oman’s Salalah to India, and the MSC Patnaree is a Liberian-flagged container ship sailing from Somalia to Sri Lanka.

The Houthis claim that their anti-ship campaign is aimed at Israel-linked ships and those sailing to Israel in order to pressure Tel Aviv into ending its war in Gaza.

The militia has also targeted US and UK ships after the two countries conducted strikes on Yemeni territory under Houthi control.

At the same time, US Central Command said on Wednesday that its troops had destroyed a drone in Houthi-controlled Yemeni territory, marking the latest in a succession of US military attacks on Houthi targets in Yemen.

Since November, the Houthis have seized a commercial ship, sunk two others, and launched hundreds of ballistic missiles, drones and drone boats against vessels in the Red Sea, Bab Al-Mandab Strait, Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean.

Houthi strikes have increased shipping and insurance expenses, and forced major shipping companies to reroute their ships to longer and more expensive routes across Africa.

Topics: War on Gaza Yemen Houthis

Related

Vessel and crew safe after incident southwest of Yemen’s Al-Mukha, UKMTO says
Middle-East
Vessel and crew safe after incident southwest of Yemen’s Al-Mukha, UKMTO says
UKMTO says crew forced to abandon vessel southeast of Yemen's Nishtun
Middle-East
UKMTO says crew forced to abandon vessel southeast of Yemen's Nishtun

The warm Turkish welcome for refugees is ending and Syrians are worried

The warm Turkish welcome for refugees is ending and Syrians are worried
Updated 47 sec ago
AP
Follow

The warm Turkish welcome for refugees is ending and Syrians are worried

The warm Turkish welcome for refugees is ending and Syrians are worried
  • Syrian president’s ouster this month has led many in Turkiye to argue that the refugees have no reason to stay
  • Some Syrians are panicking about returning to a devastated nation
Updated 47 sec ago
AP
GAZIANTEP, Turkiye: Turkiye gained renown as a haven for refugees by welcoming more than 3 million Syrians fleeing violence between forces from Bashar Assad ‘s government and a patchwork of rebel groups.
But the Syrian president’s ouster this month has led many in Turkiye to argue that the refugees have no reason to stay, part of the global backlash against migration. Some Syrians are panicking about returning to a devastated nation.
“There’s no work, electricity, or water. There is no leader. Who will it be? I have no idea,” said Mahmut Cabuli, who fled airstrikes by Syrian government forces and violence by rebel groups in his hometown Aleppo a decade ago. “I’m scared and don’t know what the authorities will do.”
‘My children were born here’
Cabuli spent several years in a refugee camp before he found a job at a textile factory in Gaziantep, a southern Turkish city near the Syrian border. After he met another Syrian refugee, they married and had two children.
“My children were born here,” he said. “I am working, thank God. I am happy here. I don’t want to go back now.”
Many Turks baselessly accuse Syrians of taking their jobs and straining health care and other public services. Riots have damaged Syrian-owned shops, homes or cars, including one in July in the central city of Kayseri following allegations that a Syrian refugee sexually assaulted a child. The riots sparked counterprotests in northern Syria.
Turkish authorities said that the alleged perpetrator was arrested and the victim placed under state protection.
“A spark between Syrians and Turkish citizens can immediately cause a big fire, a big flame,” said Umit Yılmaz, the mayor of Sehitkamil, which hosts 450,000 Syrians.
“The Syrians need to be reunited with their homeland immediately,” he said. “I have come to a point where I am even willing to get in my own car and take them away if necessary.”
Was staying in Turkiye temporary or for good?
In 2014, Turkish authorities gave Syrians universal access to health care, education and the right to work by granting them a legal status known as temporary protection.
As a result, Turkiye has taken in more Syrian refugees than any other nation — more than 3.8 million at its peak in 2022, or roughly 60 percent of all the Syrians logged by UN refugee agency UNHCR.
But more recently, anti-refugee sentiment has surged as Turkiye has grappled with problems including persistent inflation — particularly in food and housing — and with high youth unemployment.
“This prolonged stay under temporary protection must end,” said Azmi Mahmutoglu, spokesman for the Victory Party, a right-wing party that has opposed the presence of Syrians in Turkiye and called for their repatriation.
Hundreds of Syrians have gathered at border gates along Turkiye’s 911-kilometer (566 mile) frontier with Syria since Assad’s fall and the returns are expected to accelerate if Syria becomes stable.
Metin Corabatir, director of the Ankara-based Research Center on Asylum and Migration, said most of the departures so far appear to be Syrians checking the situation back in Syria before deciding whether to move their families back.
Muhammed Nur Cuneyt, a 24-year-old Syrian who arrived in 2011 from the northern town of Azaz, was eagerly waiting at one gate on Dec. 10, saying he was grateful to Turkiye for granting refuge but resented hearing anti-Syrian sentiment as his people fought Assad.
“Some were saying ‘Why are the Syrians here? Why don’t you go back and fight with your nation?’” he said.
Are they voluntary returns?
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought ways to encourage the refugees’ voluntary returns — including building housing in Syria close to the Turkish border after Syrian migration helped weaken support for his Justice and Development party.
Erdogan has four more years in office but the main opposition party has a slight lead in polls.
One refugee who returned to Syria said that he had signed a document ending his protected refugee status under Turkish law.
“Would they be allowed to come back to Turkiye? Corabatir said. “Our hope is that it will continue.”
This week, UNHCR said it does not believe that conditions to end Syrian’s refugee status have been met and it still thinks they need protection.
But for Huseyin Basut, the Turkish owner of a pet shop in Gaziantep, Turkiye has done all that it can for the Syrians.
“We did all we could as a country and as citizens,” said Bayut, 52. “Since the war is over, they should return to their homes, build their homes or whatever they need to do and may God help them.”

Lawsuit alleges US failed to evacuate Palestinian Americans trapped in Gaza

Lawsuit alleges US failed to evacuate Palestinian Americans trapped in Gaza
Updated 20 December 2024
Reuters
Follow

Lawsuit alleges US failed to evacuate Palestinian Americans trapped in Gaza

Lawsuit alleges US failed to evacuate Palestinian Americans trapped in Gaza
  • US government says rescue of Americans is top priority
  • Separate suit was filed earlier this week over US support for Israel
Updated 20 December 2024
Reuters

WASHINGTON: Nine Palestinian Americans sued the US government on Thursday, alleging that it had failed to rescue them or members of their families who were trapped in Gaza where Israel’s war has killed tens of thousands and caused a humanitarian crisis.
The lawsuit accuses the State Department of discriminating against Americans of Palestinian origin by abandoning them in a war zone and not making the same effort that it would to promptly evacuate and protect Americans of different origins in similar situations.
It was the second case against the US government this week after Palestinian families sued the US State Department on Tuesday over Washington’s support for Israel’s military.
A US State Department spokesperson said the department does not comment on pending litigation, while adding the safety and security of American citizens around the world is a “top priority.”
Thursday’s lawsuit was announced by advocacy group Council on American Islamic Relations and attorney Maria Kari, and filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
The suit alleges the plaintiffs’ right to equal protection under the US Constitution has been violated by depriving them “of the normal and typical evacuation efforts the federal government extends to Americans who are not Palestinians.”
It mentions comparable instances of the US government evacuating its citizens from conflict zones such as in Afghanistan, Lebanon and Sudan and names President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin as defendants.
The State Department spokesperson said the US has evacuated Americans from unsafe areas around the world, including Gaza.
Israel’s war has killed over 45,000 people, according to the Gaza health ministry while also sparking accusations of genocide and war crimes that Israel denies. The military assault has displaced nearly Gaza’s entire 2.3 million population and caused a hunger crisis.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7, 2023, when Palestinian Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Topics: War on Gaza United States of America (USA)

Related

UN votes overwhelmingly for ICJ probe of Israeli role in Gaza’s ‘dystopian humanitarian nightmare’
Middle-East
UN votes overwhelmingly for ICJ probe of Israeli role in Gaza’s ‘dystopian humanitarian nightmare’
Israel’s deprivation of water in Gaza is act of genocide – Human Rights Watch
Middle-East
Israel’s deprivation of water in Gaza is act of genocide – Human Rights Watch

In wartime Bethlehem, Christmas joy hard to find

In wartime Bethlehem, Christmas joy hard to find
Updated 20 December 2024
AFP
Follow

In wartime Bethlehem, Christmas joy hard to find

In wartime Bethlehem, Christmas joy hard to find
Updated 20 December 2024
AFP

BETHLEHEM: On Bethlehem’s Manger Square, Christmas decorations and pilgrims are notably absent for a second wartime festive season in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city.
The Church of the Nativity that dominates the square is as empty as the plaza outside. Only the chants of Armenian monks echo from the crypt where Christians believe Jesus Christ was born.
“Normally on this day you would find 3,000 or 4,000 people inside the church,” said Mohammed Sabeh, a security guard for the church.
Violence across the Israeli-occupied West Bank has surged since the war in Gaza broke out on October 7 last year, but Bethlehem has remained largely quiet, even though the fighting has taken a toll on the now predominantly Muslim city.
Foreign tourists, on whom Bethlehem’s economy almost entirely relies, stopped coming due to the war. An increase in restrictions on movement, in the form of Israeli checkpoints, is also keeping many Palestinians from visiting.
“Christians in Ramallah can’t come because there are checkpoints,” Sabeh said, complaining that Israeli soldiers “treat us badly,” leading to long traffic queues for those trying to visit from the West Bank city 22 kilometers (14 miles) away, on the other side of nearby Jerusalem.
Anton Salman, Bethlehem’s mayor, told AFP that on top of pre-existing checkpoints, the Israeli army had set up new roadblocks around Bethlehem, creating “an obstacle” for those wanting to visit.
“Maybe part of them will succeed to come, and part of them, they are going to face the gates and the checkpoints that Israel is putting around,” Salman said.


The somber atmosphere created by the Gaza war, which began with Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, would make showy celebrations an insensitive display, said Salman.
“We want to show the world that Bethlehem is not having Christmas as usual,” he said.
Prayers will go on, and the Catholic Church’s Latin Patriarch will make the trip from Jerusalem as usual, but the festivities will be of a more strictly religious nature than the festive celebrations the city once held.
There will be no float parade, no scout march and no large gatherings on the streets this year.
“Bethlehem is special at Christmas. It is so special in the Holy Land. Jesus was born here,” said Souad Handal, a 55-year-old tour guide from Bethlehem.
“It’s so bad (now) because the economy of Bethlehem, it depends on tourism.”
Joseph Giacaman, owner of one of Bethlehem’s best-located shops right on Manger Square, said he now only opens once or twice a week “to clean up,” for lack of customers.
“A lot of families lost their business because, you know, there are no tourists,” said Aboud, another souvenir shopkeeper, who didn’t give his last name.
Similarly, in Jerusalem’s Old City, just eight kilometers (five miles) away but on the other side of the separation wall built by Israel, the Christian quarter has eschewed traditional Christmas decorations.
The municipality has forgone its traditional Christmas tree at the main entrance to the neighborhood, New Gate, and nativity scenes have been restricted to private properties.
The tightening of security around Bethlehem since the start of the war, combined with economic difficulties, has led many local residents to leave.
“When you can’t offer your son his needs, I don’t think that you are going to stop just thinking how to offer it,” said Salman, the mayor.
Because of that, “a lot of people, during the last year, left the city,” he said, estimating that roughly 470 Christian families had moved out of the greater Bethlehem area.
However, the phenomenon is by no means restricted to Christians, who represented around 11 percent of the district’s about 215,000 inhabitants in 2017.
Father Frederic Masson, the Syrian Catholic priest for the Bethlehem parish, said that Christians and non-Christians alike had been leaving Bethlehem for a long time, but that “recent events have accelerated and amplified the process.”
In particular, “young people who can’t project themselves into the future” are joining the exodus, Masson said.
“When your future is confiscated by the political power in place... it kills hope,” he said.
Echoing Father Masson, Fayrouz Aboud, director of Bethlehem’s Alliance Francaise, a cultural institute that provides language courses, said that in current times “hope has become more painful than despair.”
With Israeli politicians increasingly talking of annexing the West Bank, she said many young people come to her to learn French and build skills that would allow them to live abroad.
Even her own 30-year-old son has raised the idea, telling her: “Come, let’s leave this place, (the Israelis) will come. They will kill us.”

Topics: War in Gaza

In post-Assad Damascus, hundreds protest for democracy, women’s rights

In post-Assad Damascus, hundreds protest for democracy, women’s rights
Updated 20 December 2024
AFP
Follow

In post-Assad Damascus, hundreds protest for democracy, women’s rights

In post-Assad Damascus, hundreds protest for democracy, women’s rights
  • Despite HTS’s reassurances, many Syrians fear the new administration will move toward religious rule that marginalizes minority communities and excludes women from public life
Updated 20 December 2024
AFP

DAMASCUS: In Damascus’s Ummayad Square, hundreds gathered Thursday, demanding a democratic state that includes women in public life, marking the first such demonstration since Islamist-led rebels toppled longtime ruler Bashar Assad.
Women and men, young and old, chanted slogans including “No to religious rule,” “God is for religion and the homeland is for all,” and “We want a democracy, not a religious state.”
“We are here in peaceful action to safeguard the gains of the revolution that has let us stand here today in complete freedom,” said Ayham Hamsho, 48, a prosthetic limb maker in the country torn by more than 13 years of war.
“For more than 50 years, we have been under tyrannical rule that has blocked party and political activity in the country,” he told AFP.
“Today we are trying to organize our affairs” in order to achieve “a secular, civil, democratic state” that is decided at the ballot box, he added.
For days, Syrians celebrated in Ummayad Square after rebels led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham took the capital on December 8 and toppled Assad after a lightning offensive.
Rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda and proscribed as a “terrorist” organization by several Western governments, HTS has sought to moderate its rhetoric by assuring protection for the country’s many religious and ethnic minorities.
It has appointed a transitional leadership to run the country until March 1.
Despite the reassurances, many Syrians fear the new administration will move toward religious rule that marginalizes minority communities and excludes women from public life.
On Thursday, some protesters held signs reading simply the word “secular,” while one man held a sign with the scales of justice hanging equally and the words “men” and “women” written below.
People also chanted “the Syrian people are one,” rejecting divisions among the multi-confessional and multi-ethnic country.
A few armed HTS fighters, some of them masked, roamed around at the demonstration.
One told the crowd, “the great Syrian revolution was victorious through armed force,” before protesters cut him off, chanting, “Down with military rule.”
One young man wearing keffiyeh scarf and dark glasses held a hand-written sign saying, “No free nation without free women,” while another demonstrator’s placard read “Equality between women and men is a legitimate Islamic and international right.”
Actress Raghda Khateb, standing with friends among the crowd, said “Syrian women have been a constant partner on the streets, in protecting protesters, in tending to the wounded, and in prisons and detention centers.”
She said the demonstration was part of “preventive” action to block any attempts to establish strict conservative rule in the country.
“The people who took to the streets against the murderous regime are ready to come out again and to rule,” she added.
The demand for women’s right to participate in political life came days after Obaida Arnaout, spokesman for the new political administration, said “female representation in ministries or parliament... is premature,” citing “biological” and other considerations.
The remarks sparked criticism and anger among some Syrians, including protester Majida Mudarres, 50, a retired civil servant.
“Women have a big role in political life... We will be observing any position against women and will not accept it. The time in which we were silent is over,” she told AFP.
Assad’s family crushed dissent, ruling Syria with an iron fist for decades.
Fatima Hashem, 29, who writes television series, said Syrian women “must not be just partners but must lead the work of building a new Syria.”
Women must be “a major voice in the new society,” added Hashem, who was wearing a white hijab.
Under Assad’s anti-Islamist rule, women were involved in Syria’s political, social and economic life, with parliamentary and ministerial representation sometimes ranging between 20 percent and 30 percent.
Researcher Widad Kreidi said she was worried by some statements from HTS, which until just weeks ago ruled a conservative rebel bastion in Syria’s northwest.
“While men were fighting, women were keeping up the economy, feeding their children and taking care of their families,” Kreidi said.
“Nobody has the right to come to Damascus and attack women in any way,” she added.

Topics: Fall of Assad Syria

Related

Special ‘No longer afraid’: Journalists drop pseudonyms as Syrians reclaim voices after Assad’s fall
Media
‘No longer afraid’: Journalists drop pseudonyms as Syrians reclaim voices after Assad’s fall
Syrian girls’ right to schooling unrestricted, new education minister says
Middle-East
Syrian girls’ right to schooling unrestricted, new education minister says

UN votes overwhelmingly for ICJ probe of Israeli role in Gaza’s ‘dystopian humanitarian nightmare’

UN votes overwhelmingly for ICJ probe of Israeli role in Gaza’s ‘dystopian humanitarian nightmare’
Updated 20 December 2024
Follow

UN votes overwhelmingly for ICJ probe of Israeli role in Gaza’s ‘dystopian humanitarian nightmare’

UN votes overwhelmingly for ICJ probe of Israeli role in Gaza’s ‘dystopian humanitarian nightmare’
  • 137 countries vote in favor of resolution, which was drafted by Norway and co-sponsored by several countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Spain
  • Norwegian deputy foreign minister says Israel is not collaborating with humanitarian organizations and is in breach of its obligations under international law
Updated 20 December 2024
Ephrem Kossaify

The UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to adopt a resolution calling on the International Court of Justice to issue an advisory opinion on Israel’s humanitarian obligations to ensure and facilitate the unrestricted delivery of humanitarian aid necessary for the survival of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
The resolution, drafted by Norway, was adopted with 137 member states voting in favor. Israel, the US and 10 other countries voted against it, and 22 abstained.
Israel’s parliament passed laws in October banning the UN’s aid agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, from operating inside Israel and East Jerusalem. Israel alleges that the agency, which has provided critical support for Palestinian refugees for seven decades, has been infiltrated by Hamas but has consistently failed to provide evidence to support the accusation.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, Israel has maintained strict control over the aid that enters the besieged territory. On Thursday, Human Rights Watch became the latest international organization to accuse Israeli authorities of carrying out acts of extermination and genocide against Palestinians by deliberately restricting access to water.
Georgios Petropoulos, the head of the UN’s humanitarian office in Gaza, said on Thursday that Israel was weaponizing the aid system, which is severely limiting the ability to provide assistance to civilians.
“Every day as an aid worker in Gaza, you’re forced to make horrible decisions,” he said. “Should I let people die of starvation or of the cold? Do we bring in more food to ease hunger, or more plastic sheets or some shelter from the rain at night? Do I cut back on hygiene supplies or do I bring in more painkillers for the sick and injured?”
Israeli support for humanitarian operations is “almost zero,” Petropoulos added.
“As the occupying power, it imposes blanket prohibitions on nearly everything. Commercial imports are being banned. Humanitarian equipment and supplies for Gaza are consistently blocked, and our own movements inside the Gaza Strip are most often denied in most areas.”
The resolution adopted by the UN on Thursday, which was co-sponsored by several countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Spain, expresses “grave concern about the dire humanitarian situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” and “calls upon Israel to uphold and comply with its obligations not to impede the Palestinian people from exercising its right to self-determination.”
The International Court of Justice is the UN’s highest judicial body. But while its advisory opinions hold legal and political significance, they are not legally binding. The court, based in The Hague, lacks the power to enforce its opinions if they are disregarded.
Norway’s deputy foreign minister, Andreas Kravik, said after the vote that the resolution follows several months during which the world has watched a catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza turn into “a dystopian nightmare.”
He added: “45,000 Palestinians have been killed — many more, probably, if you include those under the rubble — and we have an obligation, as representatives of the international community, to respond and to react, and that is what we did today with this resolution.”
While he said there was no lack of willingness among many countries and the UN to step up their humanitarian efforts in Gaza, Kravik lamented the lack of access to the territory as “the fundamental problem” they face.
“Israel is not collaborating,” he said. “Israel is not facilitating humanitarian access. (So) today, the international community has said, ‘Enough is enough.’
“Israel is claiming that they have a right to do what they’re doing. We are now seeking guidance from the highest court of the world, the ICJ, to punctuate this argument. We want clarity on the legal issues.
“We are determined. We are clear-eyed about Israel’s obligations. Israel, under international law, has an obligation to provide assistance, to collaborate with UN humanitarian organizations and third states and let them help those who are suffering.”

Topics: War on Gaza

Related

Israel’s deprivation of water in Gaza is act of genocide – Human Rights Watch
Middle-East
Israel’s deprivation of water in Gaza is act of genocide – Human Rights Watch
What we know of the latest talks for a Gaza ceasefire
Middle-East
What we know of the latest talks for a Gaza ceasefire

Latest updates

The warm Turkish welcome for refugees is ending and Syrians are worried
The warm Turkish welcome for refugees is ending and Syrians are worried
Sri Lanka navy rescues boat of 100 Rohingya refugees
Sri Lanka navy rescues boat of 100 Rohingya refugees
An ‘embarrassing’ night for Stephen Curry and the Warriors, who fall by 51 at Memphis
An ‘embarrassing’ night for Stephen Curry and the Warriors, who fall by 51 at Memphis
Australia announces $118 million deal to enhance policing in Solomon Islands
Australia announces $118 million deal to enhance policing in Solomon Islands
Japan inspects US air base over chemical spill
Japan inspects US air base over chemical spill

Search form

Print Edition
Read pdf version Subscribe now
© 2024 SAUDI RESEARCH & PUBLISHING COMPANY, All Rights Reserved And subject to Terms of Use Agreement.