https://arab.news/zqebm
RIYADH: Yemen’s president left for the United States on Saturday to undergo periodic medical examinations, state news agency SABA reported.
President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has lived in Riyadh since the Iranian-backed Houthi militia captured the Yemeni capital Sanaa in 2015.
JERUSALEM/RAMALLAH: Israel’s military killed five Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, hours after a pregnant settler was killed in a shooting, as hard-line pro-settler leaders including a government minister called for Palestinian towns to be razed.
The military said in a statement it had killed five “terrorists” and arrested a sixth who had barricaded themselves in a building in Tamoun, following an exchange of gunfire and the use of shoulder-fired missiles by Israeli soldiers.
The military wing of Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad later issued a statement saying five of its members were killed while clashing with Israeli forces that surrounded their house in the town of Tamoun, north of the West Bank.
Tamoun is a Palestinian town about 35 km (22 miles) from the Israeli settlement of Brukhin, near which the heavily pregnant woman, Tzeela Gez, was killed on Wednesday night in a shooting that drew strong condemnation from Israeli leaders.
The military said it was searching for those responsible for Wednesday’s shooting — whom it did not identify — though it was not immediately clear whether the Tamoun operation was linked.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the shooting, which occurred amid one of the largest Israeli military operations in the West Bank in two decades and while the Israeli military bombards Gaza.
Gunfire could be heard in Tamoun on Thursday, while Reuters footage showed flames and black smoke on the top floor of a house as Israeli soldiers stood on the street outside. The Palestinian WAFA news agency said the Israeli military was demolishing the house where the Palestinian men had been killed.
The Israeli military said soldiers had identified the “terrorists” in a building during an overnight operation in Tamoun and the nearby city of Tubas. It recovered rifles used by the militants in the building in Tamoun, it said.
The military also said that three armed individuals had been arrested in Tubas.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said the military had taken the bodies of four of the deceased. The local Red Crescent said it had recovered a fifth body from a burning building.
Demand for retribution
Gez, the pregnant woman, was shot near the Brukhin settlement while traveling to hospital with her husband to give birth. She was pronounced dead at the hospital where her baby was delivered by caesarean section, Israeli media reported.
The baby was reportedly in serious but stable condition, while Gez’s husband Hananel was lightly injured.
As retribution, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said the nearby Palestinian towns of Bruqin and az-Zawiya should be destroyed, just as cities in Gaza have been.
“Just as we are flattening Rafah, Khan Younis and Gaza (in the Gaza Strip), we must also flatten the terror nests in Judea and Samaria,” Smotrich said on social media, employing the term often used in Israel for the West Bank.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped security forces would quickly find those responsible for Gez’s death, while President Isaac Herzog expressed his condolences to her family.
The chief of Israel’s general staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, visited the troops searching for Gez’s killer on Thursday near Brukhin.
The Israeli military has killed dozens of Palestinians and destroyed many homes since it launched an operation in January in the West Bank city of Jenin to root out militants.
Those killed have included members of Hamas and other militant groups but also some civilians, including women and children.
ISTANBUL: Turkiye’s foreign minister was on Thursday meeting with the Russian delegation that is in Istanbul for their first direct peace talks with Ukraine in three years, a ministry source said.
“The meeting between Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and the Russian side, headed by Vladimir Medinsky has started,” the source said of talks taking place at Istanbul’s Dolmabahce Palace.
The talks had been announced earlier in the evening by a foreign ministry spokesman.
Russia and Ukraine had been expected to meet on Thursday in Istanbul for their first direct peace talks in more than three years at the Dolmabahce Palace on the banks of the Bosphorus.
But as the day wore on without any concrete indications of timings, it remained unclear whether the delegations would meet later in the evening or leave it until Friday.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was in southern Turkish city of Antalya for a NATO summit Thursday, was due in Istanbul on Friday.
He told reporters he would meet Ukraine’s top diplomat, Andriy Sybiga there, while a lower-level US official would meet with the Russian delegation.
The minister was not thought to be part of the Ukrainian delegation to the talks.
Rubio also expressed hope that Turkiye would work to bring the two delegations together.
Earlier on Thursday, Fidan and Rubio held talks on the sidelines of the NATO meeting, with the pair agreeing that “efforts would continue to be made to ensure direct negotiations between the parties,” a source at the Turkish foreign ministry said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was in Ankara earlier on Thursday, has sent a pared-down team to the Istanbul talks after Russia showed up with a relatively low-level delegation.
The Ukrainian delegation is headed by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, while the Russian side is being led by Medinsky, a hawkish adviser to Russia’s Vladimir Putin who has questioned Ukraine’s right to exist and led failed talks in 2022 at the start of the war.
UNITED NATIONS: Libya has accepted the authority of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate alleged war crimes in the country despite not being party to the Rome Statute, the court’s founding treaty, ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan said Thursday.
“I strongly welcome the courage, the leadership and the decision by the Libyan authorities” to recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction over possible war crimes and repression committed since 2011 until the end of 2027, Khan added.
LONDON: President Donald Trump can help bring peace to Gaza, a senior Hamas official said as he confirmed that the Palestinian group has told the US it is willing to hand over governance of the territory.
In an interview with Sky News on Thursday, Basem Naim said his organization has shared a ceasefire plan directly with officials in Washington and offered to hand over administration of Gaza “immediately if we reach an end of this war.”
The proposal called for “a prisoner exchange, total withdrawal of Israeli forces, allowing all the aid to get into Gaza, and rebuilding of the Gaza Strip without forceful immigration,” he added.
Naim said he believes Trump “has the capability and the will to reach this peaceful situation.”
He continued: “President Trump can do it if he exercises enough pressure on the Israelis to end this war immediately. We are ready to cooperate with him to achieve this goal of a more peaceful region.”
Hamas released American Israeli hostage Edan Alexander on Monday as Trump was beginning a tour of the Middle East, which included visits to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. The group said the same day that it was in direct negotiations with Washington.
“We urge the Trump administration to continue its efforts to end this brutal war waged by the war criminal (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu against children, women and defenseless civilians in the Gaza Strip,” the group said.
Alexander was serving as an Israeli soldier when he was captured during the Hamas-led October 2023 attacks, in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 were taken hostage.
Israeli authorities responded with a brutal military offensive that has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and reduced Gaza to rubble. A blockade on humanitarian aid since early March has prompted warnings that the territory could soon be gripped by famine.
Naim’s comments suggest Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist group by the US, believes Trump can play a key role in helping to secure an end to Israel’s ongoing offensive, which claimed the lives of scores more people on Thursday.
He said Hamas has accepted an Egyptian peace proposal under which a politically independent body would be formed to run Gaza.
“Before that, as long as we are still occupied people, we have all the right to continue defending our people and resisting the occupation,” Naim said.
Earlier reports that the US and Hamas were engaged in direct talks reportedly angered Israeli authorities. And despite the comments from Hamas officials this week, US officials maintain that the group is still not doing enough to end the war.
“Hamas has not demonstrated they are serious about peace,” a White House National Security Council spokesperson told Sky News, adding that Trump has demanded that the group lays down its weapons.
“Hamas continues to wrongfully hold hostages, including American bodies, in the dungeons of Gaza who could easily be freed, and have shown no changes in behavior to indicate they will cease to attack civilians,” he added.
The ranks of Hamas has been heavily depleted during the war against Israel, with thousands of its members killed, including a number of senior leaders. However, it continues to maintain a strong presence in Gaza and remains key to any ceasefire agreement.
Israel has ramped up its military operations in recent weeks as it moves to gain control of large sections of Gaza and take over aid distribution throughout the territory.
DOHA: The US is examining the development of a twin-engined warplane known as the F-55 and an upgrade to its Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor called the F-22 Super, US President Donald Trump said on Thursday.
Trump was speaking at a meeting of business leaders, including the heads of Boeing and GE Aerospace in Doha, a day after announcing a string of business deals, including an order from Qatar for 160 Boeing commercial jets.
Trump referred to the F-55 both as an upgrade to the Lockheed F-35 and a new development in comments that appeared to echo talk by the US arms giant of a “best value” alternative, after losing out to Boeing to replace the F-22 superfighter.
He also highlighted the role of the new air dominance platform called the F-47, recently awarded to Boeing, and said the US was simultaneously looking at upgrading the stealth fighter that it is designed to replace, the F-22.
“We’re going to do an F-55 and — I think, if we get the right price, we have to get the right price — that’ll be two engines and a super upgrade on the F-35, and then we’re going to do the F-22,” Trump said.
“I think the most beautiful fighter jet in the world is the F-22, but we’re going to do an F-22 Super, and it’ll be a very modern version of the F-22 fighter jet,” he said.
“We’re going to be going with it pretty quickly,” he added.
Trump last month awarded Boeing the contract for the F-47 — a replacement for the Lockheed F-22 stealth fighter featuring a crewed aircraft flanked by a cohort of drones and seen as America’s most advanced or sixth-generation fighter.
Lockheed Martin, which lost out to Boeing in that Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, competition and was dropped from a separate contest for a new US Navy stealth jet, has said it is now looking at plans for a “fifth-generation-plus” fighter.
CEO James Taiclet told analysts last month that Lockheed was looking at ways of applying technology developed for its losing bid for the F-47 contract to the F-35, delivering 80 percent of the capability for half the cost.
“We’re basically going to take the chassis and turn it into a Ferrari,” he told analysts.
Lockheed did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Trump had revealed the name of this project.
Lockheed is separately in the midst of a delayed technology and software upgrade for the existing generation of F-35 strike fighter to boost cockpit displays and processing power.
Analysts said it was not immediately clear how Trump’s list of potential developments fitted into known programs and spending plans, or the timing of existing programs.
Agency Partners aerospace analyst Nick Cunningham said the F-55 may alternatively refer to the F/A-XX program, intended to replace the US Navy’s aging Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet fleet with the service’s sixth-generation stealth fighter.
The Navy and Congress are battling with the administration to keep the plans moving forward, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
