Israel warns Yemenis to avoid ports after intercepting missile

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Updated 14 May 2025
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Israel warns Yemenis to avoid ports after intercepting missile

  • A missile fired by the group struck the airport in early May, gouging a hole near its main terminal building and wounding several people
  • The Israeli military issued a warning on Sunday for Yemenis to leave three Houthi-controlled ports,

JERUSALEM: Israel’s army on Wednesday urged Yemenis to stay away from Houthi-held ports, in a likely warning of retaliation after it intercepted a missile fired by the Iran-backed militia.
The Houthis, who say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians, have repeatedly targeted Israel and shipping in the Red Sea since the October 2023 start of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in several areas in Israel, a missile launched from Yemen was intercepted,” said the Israeli military.
AFP correspondents in Jerusalem heard explosions, likely from the interception of the missile.
The Houthis, who control large swathes of the Arabian Peninsula country, claimed responsibility for launching the missile in what they said was their third attack on Israel in less than 24 hours.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said they targeted Ben Gurion International Airport, Israel’s main gateway near Tel Aviv, using what they called “a hypersonic ballistic missile.”
The Israeli military later warned Yemenis to stay away from three Houthi-held sea ports.
“Due to the use of sea ports by the terrorist Houthi regime... we urge all people present in these ports to evacuate and stay away from them for your safety until further notice,” military spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a post on X, mentioning the Yemeni ports of Hodeida, Ras Issa and Salif.


Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, speaking at a news conference in Tokyo, said the missile threat from Yemen was disrupting daily life.
“While we handle this press conference, there are sirens in Jerusalem and the center of Israel after missiles from the Houthis in Yemen,” he said.
“Millions of Israelis are now running for shelter, and it happens during the time that all the children go to schools or to kindergartens, and this is daily life under these attacks.”
On Tuesday, the Israeli military said it intercepted another missile with which the Houthis claimed they targeted Ben Gurion.
Last month, a missile fired by the Iran-backed group struck the grounds of the airport, gouging a hole near its main terminal building and wounding several people, in a rare penetration of Israel’s air defenses.
Israel retaliated against the Houthis by striking the airport in Yemen’s rebel-controlled capital Sanaa and three nearby power stations.
The Israeli military had issued a warning on Sunday for Yemenis to leave three Houthi-controlled ports, but no strikes have been reported since.
The Houthis paused their attacks during a recent two-month ceasefire in the Gaza war, but in March threatened to renew them over Israel’s aid blockade on Gaza.
US President Donald Trump, currently in Saudi Arabia on the first leg of a tour of the Gulf, last week announced the Houthis had agreed to halt attacks on shipping.
The United States began carrying out strikes against the Houthis in early 2024 under president Joe Biden, and Trump’s administration launched renewed attacks on the militia in March.
The Pentagon said on April 30 that US strikes had hit more than 1,000 targets in Yemen since mid-March in an operation dubbed “Rough Rider.”


Israel strike kills one in south Lebanon

Updated 7 sec ago
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Israel strike kills one in south Lebanon

Health ministry said an Israeli strike on a vehicle in Baraachit resulted in one dead
Israel’s military said it had “eliminated the personnel officer for Hezbollah’s Bint Jbeil sector“

BEIRUT: An Israeli strike on southern Lebanon on Friday killed one person, authorities said, with the Israeli military identifying the slain man as an official with militant group Hezbollah.

Israel has repeatedly struck Lebanon despite a November ceasefire that sought to end over a year of hostilities with Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

The Lebanese health ministry said Friday that “an Israeli strike on a vehicle in the village of Baraachit resulted in one dead.”

The Israeli military said it had “eliminated the personnel officer for Hezbollah’s Bint Jbeil sector,” near the Israeli border.

The man “was involved in efforts to rehabilitate the terrorist organization in the Bint Jbeil area of southern Lebanon and operated to recruit terrorists during the war,” a military statement said.

On Thursday, Israel said it had struck Hezbollah weapons depots and a rocket launcher, and “eliminated a Hezbollah terrorist” in Lebanon’s south.

Under the November truce, Hezbollah was to withdraw its fighters north of the Litani river, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Israeli border, leaving Lebanon’s army and United Nations peacekeepers as the only armed parties in the region.

Israel was to withdraw its troops from Lebanon but has kept them in five areas it deems strategic.

Paramilitary attacks kill 30 in Sudan village

Updated 4 min 25 sec ago
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Paramilitary attacks kill 30 in Sudan village

  • The group added that the RSF also stormed major medical facilities in the city, expelling patients and using hospitals to treat wounded paramilitary fighters

PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces killed at least 30 civilians in a two-day assault on a village in the country’s western region of Kordofan, a war monitor said Friday.
In recent months, as the war between the paramilitary troops and the regular army roared into its third year, Kordofan has emerged as a key battlefront, with the paramilitaries seeking to consolidate their control in the west after losing the capital Khartoum.
The Emergency Lawyers, a group that has documented atrocities throughout the war, said paramilitary fighters attacked the village of Brima Rasheed on Wednesday and Thursday, killing three civilians in the first raid and 27 others the following day.
It added in a statement that the dead included women and children.

FASTFACTS

• In recent months, as the war between the paramilitary troops and the regular army roared into its third year, Kordofan has emerged as a key battlefront.

• The Emergency Lawyers, a group that has documented atrocities throughout the war, said paramilitary fighters attacked the village of Brima Rasheed on Wednesday and Thursday.

The Emergency Lawyers said the paramilitary troops’ “indiscriminate killing” of civilians constituted “a serious violation” of international law.
Casualty figures are nearly impossible to independently verify, with most health facilities shut down and large swaths of Sudan inaccessible to journalists.
The monitor said sporadic clashes were also reported between paramilitary fighters and armed civilians in Brima Rasheed village, near the RSF-held city of En Nahud in West Kordofan state — a key transit point once used by the army to send reinforcements further west.
The Emergency Lawyers said that in recent days violence has spread across En Nahud, with reports of dozens of civilians killed and residential areas attacked.
The group added that the RSF also stormed major medical facilities in the city, expelling patients and using hospitals to treat wounded paramilitary fighters.
Those who resisted were beaten or detained, the Emergency Lawyers said.
Meanwhile, the UN said Friday that more than 1.3 million people who fled the fighting in Sudan have headed home, pleading for greater international aid to help returnees rebuild shattered lives.
Over a million internally displaced people have returned to their homes in recent months, UN agencies said.
A further 320,000 refugees have crossed back into Sudan this year, mainly from neighboring Egypt and South Sudan.
While fighting has subsided in the “pockets of relative safety” to where people are beginning to return, the situation remains highly precarious, the UN said.
In a joint statement, the UN’s IOM migration agency, UNHCR refugee agency and UNDP development agency called for an urgent increase in financial support to fund the recovery as people begin to return.
It said humanitarian operations were “massively underfunded.”
Sudan has 10 million IDPs, including 7.7 million forced from their homes by the current conflict, they said.
Over 4 million have sought refuge in neighboring countries.
Sudan is “the largest humanitarian catastrophe facing our world and also the least remembered,” the IOM’s regional director Othman Belbeisi, speaking from Port Sudan, told a media briefing in Geneva.
He said most of the returns (71 percent) had been to Al-Jazira state, while 8 percent had been to Khartoum.
Other returnees were mostly heading for Sennar state. Both Al-Jazira and Sennar are located southeast of Khartoum.
With the army controlling Sudan’s center, north and east, and the RSF holding nearly all of the western Darfur region, Kordofan in the south has become the main battleground of the war in recent weeks.
“We expect 2.1 million to return to Khartoum by the end of this year but this will depend on many factors, especially the security situation and the ability to restore services in a timely manner,” Belbeisi said.
He said the “vicious, horrifying civil war continues to take lives with impunity,” imploring the warring factions to put down their guns.
“The war has unleashed hell for millions and millions of ordinary people,” he said.
“Sudan is a living nightmare. The violence needs to stop.”

 

 


Aid groups sue Belgium to do more to stop Israel’s war in Gaza

Updated 10 min 59 sec ago
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Aid groups sue Belgium to do more to stop Israel’s war in Gaza

  • Humanitarian organizations warn of starving children as European powers discuss the crisis

BRUSSELS: Two Belgian aid groups launched a court case on Friday seeking to pressure the country to do more to help stop Israel’s war in Gaza, as the EU struggles to take action.

Belgium has been one of the most outspoken of the EU’s 27 countries in seeking to call out Israel over its devastating military operation in Gaza.
The EU’s top diplomat floated a raft of options after Israel was found to have breached a cooperation agreement with the EU on human rights grounds.
But the bloc’s member states are deeply divided over their approach to the conflict.

FASTFACTS

• The two organizations behind the court case are pushing for Belgium to try to unilaterally halt the EU’s cooperation deal with Israel.

• They are also demanding other steps, including the closure of the country’s airspace for any flights taking military equipment to Tel Aviv.

The two organizations behind the court case — the Belgian-Palestinian Association and National Coordination for Peace and Democracy — are pushing for Belgium to try to unilaterally halt the EU’s cooperation deal with Israel.
They are also demanding other steps, including the closure of the country’s airspace for any flights taking military equipment to Israel.
“Unless there is a sudden change, the European Union will not be able to suspend the association agreement with Israel,” Vincent Letellier, a lawyer representing the NGOs said — alluding to the bloc’s divisions.
“Countries must now be put under pressure by their voters and by the courts.”
A preliminary hearing in the case was held before a judge in Brussels on Friday and full proceedings were scheduled for Sept. 15.
International criticism of Israel is growing over the plight of the more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, where more than 100 aid and rights groups have warned that “mass starvation” is spreading.
Aid groups warned of surging numbers of malnourished children in the enclave as a trio of European powers held an “emergency call” Friday.
Doctors Without Borders said that a quarter of the young children and pregnant or breastfeeding mothers it had screened at its clinics last week were malnourished, a day after the UN said one in five children in Gaza City were suffering from malnutrition.
More than 100 aid and human rights groups warned this week that “mass starvation” was spreading in Gaza.
Israel has rejected accusations it is responsible for the deepening crisis, which the World Health Organization has called “man-made.”
Israel placed the Gaza Strip under an aid blockade in March, which it only partially eased two months later.

 


Syria, US and France agree to engage in efforts to support Syria's transition

Updated 26 min 42 sec ago
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Syria, US and France agree to engage in efforts to support Syria's transition

  • In joint statement, Syrian, US and French officials said they held “a very frank and productive meeting at a critical moment for Syria”

PARIS: Syria’s foreign minister held frank and productive talks with the United States and France at which they said on Friday they underlined the importance of ensuring the success of Syria’s political transition, unity and territorial integrity.

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shibani, French Foreign Minister Jean Noel Barrot and US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack met in Paris, days after a ceasefire halted bloodshed in Syria’s southern province of Sweida.

Hundreds of people were reported killed in the clashes between Druze fighters, Sunni Bedouin tribes and government forces, and Israel carried out airstrikes to prevent what it said was mass killing of Druze.

In a joint statement, the Syrian, US and French officials said they had held “a very frank and productive meeting at a critical moment for Syria.”

Underlining the importance of engaging quickly to ensure the success Syria’s political transition following the fall of President Bashar Assad, they said they had agreed on the need to ensure Syria’s neighbors do not pose a threat and that Syria does not pose a threat to its neighbors.

They also agreed to support efforts to hold those responsible for violence accountable, the statement said.

Last week’s clashes underlined the challenges interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa faces in stabilising Syria and maintaining centralized rule, despite warming ties with the US and his administration’s evolving security contacts with Israel.


Iran says it held ‘frank’ talks with European powers

Updated 30 min 57 sec ago
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Iran says it held ‘frank’ talks with European powers

  • Separately, a Russian rocket sent an Iranian communications satellite into orbit on Friday, a launch that highlighted strong ties between the two countries

ISTANBUL: Iranian diplomats said they held “frank and detailed” nuclear talks on Friday with counterparts from Germany, Britain and France, who have threatened to trigger sanctions if Tehran fails to agree a deal on uranium enrichment and cooperation with UN inspectors.
The meeting in Istanbul was the first since Israel launched an attack on Iran last month targeting key nuclear and military sites, sparking a 12-day war and leading Tehran to pull away from working with the UN watchdog.
Israel’s offensive — which killed top commanders, nuclear scientists and hundreds of others and in which residential areas and military sites were struck — also derailed US-Iran nuclear talks that began in April.
Separately, a Russian rocket sent an Iranian communications satellite into orbit on Friday, a launch that highlighted strong ties between the two countries.

HIGHLIGHTS

• The meeting in Istanbul was the first since Israel launched an attack on Iran last month targeting key nuclear and military sites.

• A Russian rocket sent an Iranian communications satellite into orbit on Friday, a launch that highlighted strong ties between the two countries.

The Soyuz rocket lifted off as scheduled from Vostochny launchpad in far eastern Russia, the country’s state-controlled Roscosmos corporation said. 
It carried two Russian Ionosphere-M Earth observation satellites, along with Iran’s Nahid-2 satellite and 17 smaller Russian satellites, and put them into designated orbits.
The 110-kg Iranian satellite is supposed to circle the Earth on a 500 km orbit and has a service lifetime of two years.

In November, Russia launched a pair of Iranian satellites named Kowsar and Hodhod, the first launched on behalf of the country’s private sector. It followed two previous Russian launches of Iranian satellites in 2022 and 2024.
Russia, which signed a “strategic partnership” treaty with Iran in January, strongly condemned the Israeli and US strikes on Iran last month. 
Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that Moscow could help negotiate a settlement that could allow Tehran to pursue a peaceful atomic program while assuaging Israeli security concerns.
At the same time, Putin has emphasized that Tehran hasn’t asked Moscow for military assistance and noted that the partnership treaty doesn’t envision such aid.