Yemeni Houthis claim downing third US drone in September 

Update Yemeni Houthis claim downing third US drone in September 
File image of Yemen's Houthi Ansarullah Media Centre on August 4, 2024, shows what they say is the wreckage of a US MQ-9 Reaper drone they shot down over Saada governorate.(AFP)
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Updated 16 September 2024
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Yemeni Houthis claim downing third US drone in September 

Yemeni Houthis claim downing third US drone in September 
  • Houthis have exaggerated claims in the past in ongoing campaign targeting shipping in the Red Sea over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip

AL-MUKALLA: Yemen’s Houthis claimed on Monday that they shot down another US drone over central Yemen, the third such claim this month. This comes as the Houthis abducted two Yemeni workers for international organizations.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said in a televised statement that their air defenses shot down a US military MQ-9 drone over the province of Dhamar that was conducting “hostile” missions using a locally made surface-to-air missile, bringing the total number of US drones claimed down by the Houthis to ten since the militia’s assault campaign on ships began in November. The Houthis recently claimed to have brought down two US military drones over the provinces of Marib and Saada. 

The Houthis have launched hundreds of drones, ballistic missiles and drone boats at international commercial and naval ships in global shipping lanes off Yemen since November, claiming to be acting to pressure Israel to end its war in Gaza. The Houthis said on Sunday that they fired the “new hypersonic” ballistic missile that struck the center of Israel’s capital.

This comes as the US Central Command said on Sunday night that its forces had destroyed one missile system in a Houthi-controlled Yemeni area, marking the latest round of US military attacks on Houthi targets in Yemen in response to ship attacks. 

Meanwhile, Yemeni government officials and human rights organizations said on Monday that the Houthis had abducted two Yemeni workers with international aid organizations, as the Yemeni militia escalated attacks on people working for foreign aid and human rights organizations on espionage charges.

The Yemeni Network for Rights and Freedoms, also known as YNRF, said the Houthis abducted a Yemeni worker of the UK-funded organization Oxfam in Saada, but did not specify the worker’s name or the date of the kidnapping. 

On Saturday, the Houthis abducted Abdullah Al-Baydani, a Yemeni information technology worker for the UN World Food Programme in Sanaa, the YNRF said. Yemen’s Human Rights Minister Ahmed Arman confirmed to Arab News the abduction of Al-Baydani.

Over the past three months, the Houthis have abducted at least 70 Yemeni workers from UN agencies, international rights and aid organizations, and diplomatic missions after raiding their homes and workplaces. 

The Houthis accuse Yemeni workers at those organizations of using their jobs as a cover for spying for US and Israeli intelligence agencies, allegations that the UN and other organizations strongly deny. 

According to the Yemeni Network for Rights and Freedoms, the abducted workers have been subjected to torture, forcibly disappeared, and are unable to communicate with or see their families. 

“Abductees from international organizations and UN agencies are still subjected to violations such as torture, ill-treatment, incommunicado detention, and deprivation of communication with their families,” the Yemeni organization said.


Netanyahu tells UN chief to move peacekeepers in Lebanon out of ‘harm’s way immediately’

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Netanyahu tells UN chief to move peacekeepers in Lebanon out of ‘harm’s way immediately’

Netanyahu tells UN chief to move peacekeepers in Lebanon out of ‘harm’s way immediately’
BEIRUT: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called on the UN chief to move UN peacekeepers deployed in southern Lebanon out of “harm’s way.”
Netanyahu’s appeal to UN chief Antonio Guterres comes a day after the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, refused to withdraw from the border area despite five of its members being wounded in Israeli fire in recent days.
“Mr Secretary General, get the UNIFIL forces out of harm’s way. It should be done right now, immediately,” Netanyahu said in a video statement issued by his office, in what were his first comments on the issue.
Netanyahu, speaking at a cabinet meeting, said Israeli forces had asked UNIFIL several times to leave but it had “met with repeated refusals” that provided a “human shield to Hezbollah terrorists.”
“Your refusal to evacuate the UNIFIL soldiers makes them hostages of Hezbollah. This endangers both them and the lives of our soldiers,” Netanyahu said.
“We regret the injuring of UNIFIL soldiers and we are doing everything in our power to prevent this injuring. But the simple and obvious way to ensure this is simply to get them out of the danger zone.”
UNIFIL has refused to leave its positions in southern Lebanon.
“There was a unanimous decision to stay because it’s important for the UN flag to still fly high in this region, and to be able to report to the Security Council,” UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti told AFP in an interview on Saturday.
Tenenti said Israel had asked UNIFIL to withdraw from positions “up to five kilometers (three miles) from the Blue Line” separating both countries, but the peacekeepers refused.
That would have included its 29 positions in Lebanon’s south.
UNIFIL, a mission of about 9,500 troops of various nationalities that was created in 1978, is tasked with monitoring a ceasefire that ended a 33-day war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah.
Forty nations that contribute to the peacekeeping force in Lebanon said on Saturday that they “strongly condemn recent attacks” on the peacekeepers.
“Such actions must stop immediately and should be adequately investigated,” said the joint statement, posted on X by the Polish UN mission and signed by nations including leading contributors Indonesia, Italy and India.

Iran FM says ‘no red lines’ in defending itself

Iran FM says ‘no red lines’ in defending itself
Updated 1 min 35 sec ago
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Iran FM says ‘no red lines’ in defending itself

Iran FM says ‘no red lines’ in defending itself
  • Abbas Araghchi was in Baghdad to discuss the wars in Gaza and Lebanon with Iraqi officials
  • After Baghdad, Araghchi will head to Oman

BAGHDAD: Iran’s top diplomat vowed Sunday there would be “no red lines” for the country in defending its people and interests, ahead of Israel’s expected retaliation for Iran’s recent missile attack.
“While we have made tremendous efforts in recent days to contain an all-out war in our region, I say it clearly that we have no red lines in defending our people and interests,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote in a post on X.
Iran fired 200 missiles at Israel on October 1 in what it said was retaliation for the killing of Tehran-aligned militant leaders in the region and a general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has vowed Israel’s response will be “deadly, precise, and surprising.”
Araghchi was in Baghdad to discuss the wars in Gaza and Lebanon with Iraqi officials, according to the ministry.
Ali Al-Moussawi, political adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, told AFP Araghchi’s visit was part of a diplomatic effort “to silence weapons and violence... to establish security and stability in the region.”
After Baghdad, Araghchi will head to Oman, the Iranian ISNA news agency reported.
On Thursday, Araghchi was in Qatar where he met Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani over the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
Qatar has been mediating talks aimed at a Gaza ceasefire and has called for a truce in Lebanon.
A day earlier, Araghchi met Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan.
In a recent interview, Araghchi said Iran does “not want war” but it was “not afraid of it.”
“We will be ready for any scenario,” he told Al Jazeera news network.


Sudan rescuers say air strike killed 23 in Khartoum market

Sudan rescuers say air strike killed 23 in Khartoum market
Updated 42 min 18 sec ago
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Sudan rescuers say air strike killed 23 in Khartoum market

Sudan rescuers say air strike killed 23 in Khartoum market
  • The market is near one of the main camps in the Sudanese capital, where the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been fighting the military as part of a civil war

POST SUDEN: A Sudanese network of volunteer rescuers said on Sunday the military carried out an air strike a day earlier on a marketplace in Khartoum, leaving 23 people dead.
The market is near one of the main camps in the Sudanese capital, where the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been fighting the military as part of a civil war that has killed tens of thousands of people.
“Twenty-three people were confirmed dead and more than 40 others wounded” and taken to hospital after “military air strikes on Saturday afternoon on the main market” in southern Khartoum, the youth-led Emergency Response Rooms said in a post on Facebook.
Fierce fighting has raged since Friday around Khartoum, much of which is controlled by the RSF, with the military pounding the center and south of the city from the air.
The military is advancing toward Khartoum from nearby Omdurman, where clashes erupted on Saturday, eyewitnesses said.

Since April 2023, when war broke out between army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the paramilitaries had largely pushed the army out of Khartoum.
The World Health Organization says at least 20,000 people have been killed in the civil war, but some estimates put the toll much higher at up to 150,000.
The war has also created the world’s largest displacement crisis, the UN says.
More than 10 million people, around a fifth of Sudan’s population, have been forced from their homes, according to UN figures.
A UN-backed assessment in August declared a famine in the Zamzam refugee camp in Darfur near the city of El-Fasher.
The government loyal to the army is based in Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast, where the army has retained control.
The RSF meanwhile has taken control of nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur, rampaged through the agricultural heartland of central Sudan and pushed into the army-controlled southeast.


Iran, Iraq funerals for general killed with Hezbollah chief

Iran, Iraq funerals for general killed with Hezbollah chief
Updated 13 October 2024
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Iran, Iraq funerals for general killed with Hezbollah chief

Iran, Iraq funerals for general killed with Hezbollah chief
  • Nilforoushan is a top commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force foreign operations arm was killed alongside Nasrallah

Tehran: Iran and Iraq will both stage funerals for Revolutionary Guard General Abbas Nilforoushan, killed in an Israeli air strike alongside Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, the Guards’ news agency said Sunday.
Nilforoushan, a top commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force foreign operations arm, was killed on September 27 alongside Nasrallah in the strike on south Beirut.
The IRGC said Friday his body had been recovered from the site of the strike on the Lebanese capital’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold.
Funeral ceremonies will be held in “Najaf and Karbala” in Iraq on Monday before the body is transferred to Iran’s holy city of Mashhad, the Sepah news agency said.
Another ceremony will take place at Tehran’s Imam Hossein Square on Tuesday before burial Thursday in the central city of Isfahan, his hometown, Sepah said.
On October 1, Iran fired some 200 missiles at Israel in retaliation for the killing of Nasrallah, Nilforoushan and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in late July.
Israel said it carried out the Beirut strike but did not comment on Haniyeh’s death in Tehran, where he had attended the inauguration of the Islamic republic’s new president.
Israel has vowed to retaliate for the Iranian missile attack, with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant saying the response would be “deadly, precise, and surprising.”


Iran condemns ‘illegal and unjustified’ US sanctions on oil industry: ministry

Iran condemns ‘illegal and unjustified’ US sanctions on oil industry: ministry
Updated 13 October 2024
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Iran condemns ‘illegal and unjustified’ US sanctions on oil industry: ministry

Iran condemns ‘illegal and unjustified’ US sanctions on oil industry: ministry
  • US on Friday slapped Iran with a spate of new sanctions on the country’s oil and petrochemical industry in response to Tehran’s October 1 attack against Israel.

Tehran: Iran condemned Sunday what it called an “illegal and unjustified” expansion of US sanctions targeting its oil industry following Tehran’s missile attack on Israel earlier this month.
In a statement, foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei defended Iran’s attack on Israel and “strongly condemned” the sanctions, saying they were “illegal and unjustified.”
The United States on Friday slapped Iran with a spate of new sanctions on the country’s oil and petrochemical industry in response to Tehran’s October 1 attack against Israel.
Baghaei defended Iran’s attack on Israel as being legal and insisted on Iran’s right to respond to the new sanctions.
The US Treasury Department said it targeted Iran’s so-called shadow fleet of ships involved in selling Iranian oil in circumvention of existing sanctions.
It said it had designated at least 10 companies and 17 vessels as “blocked property” over their involvement in shipments of Iranian petroleum and petrochemical products.
The State Department also announced it was placing sanctions on six further firms and six ships for “knowingly engaging in a significant transaction for the purchase, acquisition, sale, transport, or marketing of petroleum or petroleum products from Iran.”
Baghaei said “the policy of threats and maximum pressure” had no impact on “Iran’s will to defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity, national interests and citizens against any violation and foreign aggressions.”
He said the sanctions would enable Israel “to continue killing innocents and pose a threat to the peace and unity of the region and the world.”
The new wave of sanctions comes as the world awaits Israel’s promised response to Tehran’s missile attack, with oil prices hitting their highest levels since August.
Earlier this month, US President Joe Biden advised Israel against targeting oil infrastructure in Iran, one of the world’s 10 largest producers.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi last Tuesday warned that “any attack against infrastructure in Iran will provoke an even stronger response.”