AL-MUKALLA: A Yemenia Airways plane carrying 192 Yemeni evacuees landed at Sanaa airport on Saturday as the Yemeni government resumed emergency flights to evacuate more than 1,200 Yemenis stuck in war-torn Sudan.
The Yemen embassy in Sudan said that the plane carrying 192 people, including 14 newborns, departed Port Sudan at 8:38 a.m., bound for Houthi-held Sanaa. Another plane carrying roughly the same number of people was scheduled to travel to government-controlled Aden later on Saturday.
Thousands of Yemenis, including students, have been stuck in Sudan since April 15, when violence erupted between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The first set of stranded Yemenis were evacuated by the Saudi navy and transferred to Jeddah, where they were provided with free lodging for two nights before being transported to Yemen by bus.
Yemen’s Foreign Ministry said that seven Yemenia planes would transport 1,250 stranded Yemenis from Sudan to Yemen between Friday and Monday, adding that 750 Yemenis had already been airlifted from Sudan, while 800 were transported from Port Sudan to Saudi Arabia on Saudi ships. The Yemeni government said it would cover all flight costs and assist citizens in extending their passports, obtaining birth certificates for their children, and having their university and high-school certificates authorized.
Thrilled Yemenis published photos on social media as they exited Port Sudan airport.
“After one month and one day of exhaustion in Port Sudan, we are eventually evacuated from Sudan to Sanaa airport,” Fawzy Jamoom wrote on his Facebook page while boarding the plane to Sanaa on Saturday.
Separately, Yemeni government officials and human rights activists criticized a Houthi attack on a gathering of Bahais — a Yemeni religious minority — in Sanaa on Friday and urged the militia to immediately release them and end their persecution of religious minorities and opponents.
Yemen’s Information Minister Muammar Al-Eryani said in a tweet that the Houthis attacked a Bahai sect’s annual gathering in Sanaa, arresting 17 people, including five women, and raiding Bahai homes.
“This heinous crime verifies that the Houthi militia, under Iranian direction, continues its escalation, targeting, and systematic terrorism of religious minorities, particularly the Bahai community, and persecution of its adherents on the basis of their faith,” the minister said.
Since late 2014, he added, the Houthis have arbitrarily abducted Bahais, tortured them, ransacked their homes, seized their offices and other properties, and incited the public against them.
A video that circulated online showed armed and masked Houthis storming a gathering. Women’s screams can be heard in the video.
The Geneva-based SAM Organization for Human Rights and Liberties also condemned the Houthis’ “barbaric and brutal” assault on a group of Bahais, as well as the militia’s other violations of human rights in Sanaa and other areas of Yemen under their control.
“The Houthi group’s daily violations, the most recent of which was the assault on the Bahai community meeting, are merely a microcosm of the deteriorating human rights situation in the areas it controls,” the organization said.
Yemeni government resumes airlifts from Sudan
https://arab.news/vneqm
Yemeni government resumes airlifts from Sudan
- Crackdown on Bahai community condemned by human rights organization
- Thousands of Yemenis, including students, have been stuck in Sudan since April 15, when violence erupted between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
Missile fired from Yemen intercepted over central Israel, military says
Explosions were heard over Jerusalem after sirens blared across the city and central Israel on Saturday morning, AFP journalists reported, while the Israeli military said a projectile had been launched from Yemen.
The explosions and sirens came after Qatar, a key mediator between Israel and Hamas, said that the ceasefire in the war in Gaza would take effect from 0630 GMT on Sunday.
Sirens and explosions were heard over Jerusalem at around 10:20 am (08:20 GMT) on Saturday, shortly after sirens sounded across central Israel in response to the projectile launched from Yemen, the military said in a statement.
Minutes later, the military said it had intercepted the projectile launched from Yemen.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have repeatedly launched missile and drone attacks on Israel since the war in Gaza broke out in October 2023.
On Friday, the Houthis warned that they would keep up their attacks if Israel did not respect the terms of its ceasefire with Hamas.
Two UAE aid convoys reach Gaza as part of Operation Chivalrous Knight 3
- The UAE has sent 155 aid convoys under Operation Chivalrous Knight 3
DUBAI: The more UAE aid convoys crossed into the Gaza Strip this week through Egypt’s Rafah border crossing to bring various humanitarian supplies for Palestinians affected by the devastating Israeli offensive.
The convoys, part of the Operation Chivalrous Knight 3 initiative, comprise 25 trucks laden with over 309.5 tonnes of humanitarian aid, including food supplies, shelter tents and other essential items, state news agency WAM reported on Saturday.
The UAE has sent 155 aid convoys under Operation Chivalrous Knight 3, with approximately 29,584 tonnes of humanitarian supplies delivered so far for the Palestinian people.
A ceasefire early Sunday morning is expected to provide relief to the besieged enclave’s population, and despite an Israeli ban on the UN’s aid agency for Palestinians from operating in the conflict-ridden area.
Gaza ceasefire to start early Sunday morning
- Qatar foreign ministry makes announcement on social media
- Israel to free 737 prisoners during the first phase of the truce deal
JERUSALEM/DOHA: A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip will take effect at 0630 GMT on Sunday morning, Qatar, which helped mediate the deal, said on Saturday.
“As coordinated by the parties to the agreement and the mediators, the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip will begin at 8:30 am on Sunday, January 19, local time in Gaza,” Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari said on X.
“We advise the inhabitants to take precaution, exercise the utmost caution, and wait for directions from official sources.”
The exact time of the ceasefire’s start had been unclear, though Israel, whose cabinet earlier on Saturday approved the hostage and prisoner exchange deal, had said no prisoners would be freed before 1400 GMT.
During the first phase of the truce deal, Israel’s justice ministry said 737 prisoners and detainees will be freed.
It said in a statement on its website that “the government approves” the “release (of) 737 prisoners and detainees” currently in the custody of the prison service.
Palestinian militant group Hamas also said on Saturday that the mechanism of the release of Israeli hostages it holds in Gaza would depend on the number of Palestinian prisoners Israel would free.
In a statement, Hamas said the list of Palestinian prisoners to be released would be published one day before the exchange under terms of its ceasefire deal reached with Israel on Wednesday.
Israel’s cabinet voted to approve the ceasefire deal early Saturday, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, ending days of uncertainty about whether the truce would go into effect this weekend.
Those named by the ministry include men, women and children who it said will not be released before Sunday at 4:00 p.m. local time (1400 GMT).
It had previously published a list of 95 Palestinian prisoners, the majority women, to be freed in exchange for Israeli captives in Gaza.
Among those on the expanded list was Zakaria Zubeidi, a chief of the armed wing of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party.
Zubeidi escaped from Israel’s Gilboa prison with five other Palestinians in 2021, sparking a days-long manhunt, and is lauded by Palestinians as a hero.
Also to be freed is Khalida Jarar, a leftist Palestinian lawmaker whom Israel arrested and imprisoned on several occasions.
Jarar is a prominent member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group designated a “terrorist organization” by Israel, the United States and the European Union.
Detained in late December in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, the 60-year-old has been held since then without charge.
Two sources close to Hamas said that the first group of hostages to be released consists of three Israeli women soldiers.
However, since the Palestinian Islamist movement considers any Israeli of military age who has completed mandatory service a soldier, the reference could also apply to civilians abducted during the attack that triggered the war.
The first three names on a list obtained by AFP of the 33 hostages set to be released in the first phase are women under 30 who were not in military service on the day of the Hamas attack.
Justice ministry spokeswoman Noga Katz has said the final number of prisoners to be released in the first swap would depend on the number of live hostages released by Hamas.
Israel’s cabinet approves a deal for a ceasefire in Gaza
- The Israeli government announced the approval after 1 a.m. Jerusalem time and confirmed the ceasefire will go into effect on Sunday
- Under the deal, 33 of some 100 hostages who remain in Gaza are set to be released over six weeks in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians
JERUSALEM: Israel’s Cabinet approved a deal early Saturday for a ceasefire in Gaza that would release dozens of hostages held there and pause the 15-month war with Hamas, bringing the sides a step closer to ending their deadliest and most destructive fighting ever.
The government announced the approval after 1 a.m. Jerusalem time and confirmed the ceasefire will go into effect on Sunday. The hourslong Cabinet meeting went well past the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath, a sign of the moment’s importance. In line with Jewish law, the Israeli government usually halts all business for the Sabbath except in emergency cases of life or death.
Mediators Qatar and the United States announced the ceasefire on Wednesday, but the deal was in limbo for more than a day as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted there were last-minute complications that he blamed on the Hamas militant group. On Friday, the smaller security Cabinet recommended approving the deal.
Key questions remain about the ceasefire — the second achieved during the war — including the names of the 33 hostages who are to be released during the first, six-week phase and who among them is still alive.
Netanyahu instructed a special task force to prepare to receive the hostages. The 33 are women, children, men over 50 and sick or wounded people. Hamas has agreed to free three female hostages on Day 1 of the deal, four on Day 7 and the remaining 26 over the following five weeks.
Palestinian detainees are to be released as well. Israel’s justice ministry published a list of 700 to be freed in the deal’s first phase and said the release will not begin before 4 p.m. local time Sunday. All people on the list are younger or female.
Israel’s Prison Services said it will transport the prisoners instead of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which handled transportation during the first ceasefire, to avoid “public expressions of joy.” The prisoners have been accused of crimes like incitement, vandalism, supporting terror, terror activities, attempted murder or throwing stones or Molotov cocktails.
The largely devastated Gaza should see a surge in humanitarian aid. Trucks carrying aid lined up Friday on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing into Gaza.
An Egyptian official said an Israeli delegation from the military and Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency arrived Friday in Cairo to discuss the reopening of the crossing. An Israeli official confirmed a delegation was going to Cairo. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private negotiations.
Israeli forces will also pull back from many areas in Gaza during the first phase of the ceasefire and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will be able to return to what’s left of their homes.
“Once Sunday comes around, we would be happier, God willing,” one of Gaza’s displaced people, Ekhlas Al-Kafarna, said during the wait for word on the Israeli Cabinet decision.
Israel’s military said that as its forces gradually withdraw from specific locations and routes in Gaza, residents will not be allowed to return to areas where troops are present or near the Israel-Gaza border, and any threat to Israeli forces “will be met with a forceful response.”
Ceasefire talks had stalled repeatedly in previous months. But Israel and Hamas had been under growing pressure from both the Biden administration and President-elect Donald Trump to reach a deal before Trump takes office on Monday.
Hamas triggered the war with its Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border attack into Israel that killed some 1,200 people and left some 250 others captive. Nearly 100 hostages remain in Gaza.
Israel responded with a devastating offensive that has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and militants but say women and children make up more than half the dead.
Fighting continued into Friday, and Gaza’s Health Ministry said 88 bodies had arrived at hospitals in the past 24 hours. In previous conflicts, both sides stepped up military operations in the final hours before ceasefires as a way to project strength.
The second — and much more difficult — phase of the ceasefire is meant to be negotiated during the first. The remainder of the hostages, including male soldiers, are to be released during this phase.
But Hamas has said it will not release the remaining captives without a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal, while Israel has vowed to keep fighting until it dismantles the group and to maintain open-ended security control over the territory.
Longer-term questions about postwar Gaza remain, including who will rule the territory or oversee the daunting task of reconstruction.
The conflict has destabilized the Middle East and sparked worldwide protests. It also highlighted political tensions inside Israel, drawing fierce resistance from Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners.
On Thursday, Israel’s hard-line national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, threatened to quit the government if Israel approved the ceasefire. He reiterated that Friday, writing on social media platform X: “If the ‘deal’ passes, we will leave the government with a heavy heart.”
There was no immediate sign early Saturday that he had done so.
Ben-Gvir’s resignation would not bring down the government or derail the ceasefire deal, but the move would destabilize the government at a delicate moment and could eventually lead to its collapse if Ben-Gvir were joined by other key Netanyahu allies.
International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor meets with Syrian leader in Damascus
- Rights groups estimate at least 150,000 people went missing after anti-government protests began in 2011, most vanishing into Assad’s prison network
THE HAGUE, Netherlands: The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan made an unannounced visit Friday to Damascus to confer with the leader of Syria’s de facto government on how to ensure accountability for alleged crimes committed in the country.
Khan’s office said he visited at the invitation of Syria’s transitional government. He met with Ahmad Al-Sharaa, the leader of Syria’s new administration who was formerly known as Mohammad Al-Golani, and the foreign minister to discuss options for justice in The Hague for victims of the country’s civil war, which has left more than half a million dead and more than six million people displaced.
Al-Sharaa is a former Al-Qaeda militant who severed ties with the extremist group years ago and leads Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, or HTS, the group leading the new authority in Syria. The former insurgent group, considered a terrorist group in the US, led the lightning offensive that toppled longtime dictator Bashar Assad last month and is now the de facto ruling party in the country.
Assad, who fled to Russia in December, waged an oppressive campaign against anyone who opposed him during his more than two decades in power.
Rights groups estimate at least 150,000 people went missing after anti-government protests began in 2011, most vanishing into Assad’s prison network. Many of them were killed, either in mass executions or from torture and prison conditions. The exact number remains unknown.
The global chemical weapons watchdog found Syrian forces were responsible for multiple attacks using chlorine gas and other banned substances against civilians.
Other groups have also been accused of human rights violations and war crimes during the country’s civil war.
The new authorities have called for members of the Assad regime to be brought to justice. It is unclear how exactly that would work at this stage.
Syria is not a member of the ICC, which has left the court without the ability to investigate the war. In 2014, Russia and China blocked a referral by the United Nations Security Council which would have given the court jurisdiction. Similar referrals were made for Sudan and Libya.
Khan’s visit comes after a trip to Damascus last month by the UN organization assisting in investigating the most serious crimes in Syria. The International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism for Syria was created to assist in evidence-gathering and prosecution of individuals responsible for possible war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide since Syria’s civil war began in 2011.
The group’s head, Robert Petit, highlighted the urgency of preserving documents and other evidence before they are lost.