Region ‘closest to war since 1973’: Saudi envoy to UK

Region ‘closest to war since 1973’: Saudi envoy to UK
The Israel-Palestine conflict is at the heart of the tensions, and both sides have a responsibility to avoid escalation. (AFP)
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Updated 19 September 2024
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Region ‘closest to war since 1973’: Saudi envoy to UK

Region ‘closest to war since 1973’: Saudi envoy to UK
  • Prince Khalid bin Bandar calls for ‘renewed efforts’ to stop escalation
  • ‘The situation on the ground is getting worse and worse,’ he tells Sky News

LONDON: The Middle East is facing its greatest threat of regional war since 1973, the Saudi ambassador to the UK has warned.

On the Sky News program “The World with Yalda Hakim,” Prince Khalid bin Bandar said “renewed efforts” are required to end the bloodshed.

“I’d like to say I was optimistic, but it’s difficult to see where that optimism would come from,” he added.

“The situation on the ground is getting worse and worse ... I think this is the closest we’ve been to a regional war since 1973.”

The Israel-Palestine conflict is at the heart of the tensions, and both sides have a responsibility to avoid escalation, Prince Khalid added.

“The Israeli-Palestinian problem affects people all around the world in a way that very few conflicts have,” he said.

“You see in protests (around the world), everyone is affected and motivated by what’s happening on the ground.

“So Israelis and Palestinians have a responsibility — whether they like it or not — to the world.”

The conflict could have global consequences, requiring the international community to “push harder” in a bid to end the fighting, he said.

“A conflict that spreads beyond where it is, spreads to the region. If it spreads to the region, it spreads to the world, and that’s not a scenario that anybody wants to see,” he added.

“It’s time we put renewed efforts in to stop the fighting … We need more of the international community to push harder.”

His comments come as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a “new phase” in fighting against Hezbollah following the detonation of the Lebanese group’s communication devices this week.

Senior international figures, including the UN secretary-general, have warned that the Israeli attacks could precede a larger operation in Lebanon.

Hezbollah has vowed to respond to the attacks, which killed more than 30 people and injured thousands.

On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington is assessing how the attacks in Lebanon could affect ceasefire negotiations in the Gaza war.


US, UK warplanes attack Houthi targets in Sanaa, Dhamar, Hodeidah

US, UK warplanes attack Houthi targets in Sanaa, Dhamar, Hodeidah
Updated 1 min 59 sec ago
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US, UK warplanes attack Houthi targets in Sanaa, Dhamar, Hodeidah

US, UK warplanes attack Houthi targets in Sanaa, Dhamar, Hodeidah
  • Strikes mostly on military bases, according to media reports
  • Militia supporters rally in Sanaa in show of solidarity with people of Palestine

AL-MUKALLA: American and British warplanes on Friday launched a series of strikes against Houthi targets in several Yemeni cities, the latest round of military operations against the militia in response to its attacks on ships.
The Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV said the “aggression” planes conducted four strikes on Al-Thawra district in Sanaa, one south of the central city of Dhamar, and seven on Hodeida airport and the Al-Katheeb region in the western city of Hodeidah.
Photographs and videos posted on social media show large, thick balls of smoke billowing from locations in Sanaa and Hodeidah.
Local media said the airstrikes targeted the Houthi’s Al-Saeyanah base in Sanaa, Al-Katheeb naval base in Hodeidah and a military base in Dhamar.
The Aden Al-Ghad news site said three strikes were launched against positions in the Mukayras region of the central province of Al-Bayda, while residents in the southern province of Dhale reported seeing three missiles flying overhead in the direction of the Arabian Sea.
The attacks happened as thousands of Houthi supporters rallied in the streets of Sanaa and other areas to express solidarity with the people of Palestine and Lebanon and opposition to Israel’s war, and to condemn Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Houthi government spokesperson Hashem Sharaf Al-Din condemned the airstrikes, describing them as a “desperate attempt” by the US and UK to pressure the militia into ending its attacks on ships and missile and drone attacks against Israel in support for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Since January, the US and UK militaries have launched repeated strikes on Sanaa, Hodeidah, Taiz and other Yemeni areas held by the Houthis, targeting drone and missile launchers, storage facilities and ammunition depots.
The latest followed a spate of Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea over the past week.
On Sunday, Israeli warplanes struck ports, power stations and fuel tanks in Hodeidah after the Houthis fired a ballistic missile at Israel on Saturday.


Erdogan lashes out at Israel for attack on UN chief

Erdogan lashes out at Israel for attack on UN chief
Updated 31 min 48 sec ago
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Erdogan lashes out at Israel for attack on UN chief

Erdogan lashes out at Israel for attack on UN chief
  • Israel “is shamelessly challenging UN Secretary-General Guterres,” Erdogan said
  • “196 countries in the world will stand by the UN secretary-general” against Israel

ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday accused Israel of “shamelessly” attacking UN chief Antonio Guterres by declaring him “persona non grata” for not quickly condemning Iran’s ballistic missile barrage.
Israel “is shamelessly challenging UN Secretary-General Guterres,” Erdogan told an audience at a defense technology fair in the southern province of Adana.
He added that “196 countries in the world will stand by the UN secretary-general” against Israel.
Relations between the UN and Israel have been difficult since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the Gaza war.
On Wednesday, Guterres was declared persona non grata by Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, accusing him of failing to specifically condemn Iran’s missile attack on the country this week. Katz called Guterres an “anti-Israel secretary-general who lends support to terrorists, rapists, and murderers.”
“Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel does not deserve to step foot on Israeli soil,” Katz said in a statement.
Guterres pointedly condemned Iran’s attack at a UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday.
The Security Council on Thursday offered its full support to Guterres.
Without naming Israel, the council’s five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — and 10 non-permanent members “underscored the need for all member states to have a productive and effective relationship with the secretary-general.”


US arranges flights to bring Americans out of Lebanon as others seek escape

US arranges flights to bring Americans out of Lebanon as others seek escape
Updated 48 min 55 sec ago
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US arranges flights to bring Americans out of Lebanon as others seek escape

US arranges flights to bring Americans out of Lebanon as others seek escape
  • Some officials and community leaders in Michigan, home to the nation’s largest concentration of Arab Americans, are calling on the US to start an evacuation
  • Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said: “The US military is, of course, on the ready and has a whole wide range of plans”

WASHINGTON: US-arranged flights have brought about 350 Americans and their immediate relatives out of Lebanon this week during escalated fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, while thousands of others still there face airstrikes and diminishing commercial flights.
In Washington, senior State Department and White House officials met Thursday with two top Arab American officials to discuss US efforts to help American citizens leave Lebanon. The two leaders also separately met with officials from the Department of Homeland Security.
Michigan state Rep. Alabas Farhat and Abed Ayoub, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, used the White House meeting to “really drive home a lot of important points about the issues our community members are facing on the ground and a lot of the logistical problems that they’re encountering with it when it comes to this evacuation,” Ayoub said.
Some officials and community leaders in Michigan, home to the nation’s largest concentration of Arab Americans, are calling on the US to start an evacuation. Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said that was not being considered right now.
“The US military is, of course, on the ready and has a whole wide range of plans. Should we need to evacuate American citizens out of Lebanon, we absolutely can,” Singh told reporters.
Israel has opened a pounding air campaign deep into Lebanon and a ground incursion in the country’s south targeting the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group. Iran on Tuesday fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles toward Israel, leaving the region bracing for any Israeli retaliation and fearing an all-out regional war.
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since the day after Hamas, another Iranian-backed militant group, attacked Israel on Oct. 7, triggering the war in Gaza.
Other countries, from Greece to the United Kingdom, Japan and Colombia, have arranged flights or sent military planes to ferry out their citizens.
As Israeli bombardments targeting senior Hezbollah leaders shook southern neighborhoods in Lebanon’s capital last week, “We could still see, hear and feel everything” despite fleeing to the mountains outside Beirut, said Nicolette Hutcherson, a longtime humanitarian volunteer living in Lebanon with her husband and three children.
The only seats Hutcherson’s family could find on commercial carriers were for flights weeks away and for thousands of dollars, she said. Ultimately, Hutcherson and her young children joined crowds heading to Lebanon’s Mediterranean marinas, finding spots on pleasure boats turned evacuation ships for the nine-hour ride to Cyprus.
Her husband was able to find a single seat out on a plane days later to join them.
Another American family was mourning Kamel Ahmad Jawad, a resident of metro Detroit’s Dearborn area, who was killed in southern Lebanon on Tuesday. Family members said he stayed to help civilians too old, infirm or poor to flee.
He had been on the phone with his daughter Tuesday when the impact of a strike knocked him off his feet, his daughter, Nadine Kamel Jawad, said in a statement.
“He simply got up, found his phone, and told me he needed to finish praying in case another strike hit him,” she said.
The State Department has been telling Americans for almost a year not to travel to Lebanon and advising them to leave the country on commercial flights for months. It also has made clear that government-run evacuations are rare, while offering emergency loans to aid travel out of Lebanon.
Some Americans said relatives who are US citizens or green-card holders have been struggling for days or weeks to get seats on flights out of Lebanon. Limits on withdrawing money from banks due to Lebanon’s longstanding economic collapse and intermittent electricity and Internet have made it difficult, they said.
Rebecca Abou-Chedid, a lawyer based in Washington, paid $5,000 to get a female relative on the last seat of a flight out of Beirut on Saturday.
“She was on her way to the airport” when Israeli began one of its first days of intensified bombing, Abou-Chedid said.
By Thursday, some Americans said their loved ones had been able to secure tickets for upcoming flights and were hopeful.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the US would continue to organize flights as long the security situation in Lebanon is dire and there is demand.
Miller said Lebanon’s flag carrier, Middle East Airlines, also had set aside about 1,400 seats on flights for Americans over the past week. Several hundred had taken them, he said.
Miller could not speak to the cost of the airline’s flights, over which the US government has no regulatory oversight, but said the maximum fare that would be charged for a US-organized contract flight would be $283 per person.
More than 6,000 American citizens have contacted the US Embassy in Beirut seeking information about departing the country over the past week.
Not all of those have actually sought assistance in leaving, and Miller said the department understood that some Americans, many of them dual US-Lebanese nationals and longtime residents of the country, may choose to stay.
Miller said the embassy is prepared to offer temporary loans to Americans who choose to remain in Lebanon but want to relocate to a potentially safer area of the country. The embassy also would provide emergency loans to Americans who wish to leave on the US-contracted flights.


Israeli bombardment kills 29 people in Gaza, militants renew rocket fire into Israel

Israeli bombardment kills 29 people in Gaza, militants renew rocket fire into Israel
Updated 04 October 2024
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Israeli bombardment kills 29 people in Gaza, militants renew rocket fire into Israel

Israeli bombardment kills 29 people in Gaza, militants renew rocket fire into Israel
  • The new rocket salvoes indicated that Hamas-led militant factions in Gaza are still able to fire projectiles into Israel

CAIRO: Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 29 Palestinians on Friday, medics said, and sirens blared in southern Israel in response to renewed rocket fire from militants in the Palestinian enclave.
The new rocket salvoes indicated that Hamas-led militant factions in Gaza are still able to fire projectiles into Israel despite a year-long Israeli aerial and ground offensive that has turned wide areas of the enclave into wasteland.
On Friday, the Israeli military said sirens sounded in southern Israel for the first time in around two months.
“Almost a year after Oct. 7, Hamas is still threatening our civilians with their terrorism and we will continue operating against them,” it added, referring to the anniversary of Hamas’ cross-border attack that touched off the Gaza war.


Israeli threats paralyze paramedics’ work, halt two hospitals, close key land crossing

Israeli threats paralyze paramedics’ work, halt two hospitals, close key land crossing
Updated 22 sec ago
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Israeli threats paralyze paramedics’ work, halt two hospitals, close key land crossing

Israeli threats paralyze paramedics’ work, halt two hospitals, close key land crossing
  • transport minister said that the crossing was subject to the authority of the Lebanese state
  • Israeli air raids at night targeted Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine, rumored successor to its assassinated leader Hassan Nasrallah

BEIRUT: The Israeli military is preventing paramedics, regardless of affiliation, from carrying out relief efforts in Beirut’s southern suburb, as well as in southern Lebanon.

The Lebanese state’s Civil Defense center, located in the Hadath area near Beirut’s southern suburb, received a call purportedly from the Israeli military on Thursday night warning them not to “move any vehicles toward the targeted site,” following a series of airstrikes carried in the Mrayjeh area of the suburb, despite having received distress calls for missing persons.

On Friday morning photojournalists attempting to reach the site of the strikes, which shook Beirut, Mount Lebanon, and were heard as far as Sidon, were targeted by an Israeli combat drone.

Hezbollah said in a statement: “One member of the Civil Defense from the Islamic Health Organization was killed and several others injured while attempting to clear the rubble at the Mrayjeh site, as they were targeted by a drone strike.”

The Israeli targeting extended to paramedics and hospitals in the southern border area, resulting in two hospitals being forced out of service.

Four paramedics from Hezbollah were killed when they were targeted by a drone strike at the entrance to Marjayoun Governmental Hospital in the morning. The hospital administration decided to evacuate staff and halt work.

An Israeli airstrike also targeted a health center in the town of Kherbet Selem, killing two paramedics and wounding several others.

Mays Al-Jabal Hospital announced the suspension of work “due to the Israeli attacks on hospital staff, including the use of internationally prohibited white phosphorus in the vicinity of the hospital, as well as difficulties in securing diesel, electricity, water, food, access for medical and nursing staff and medicines.”

Saint Therese Medical Hospital in the southern suburb of Beirut announced that it was targeted by Israeli airstrikes, causing serious damage to the building, medical equipment and operating rooms. It appealed for help to continue its operations.

The Israeli military carried out more than 12 airstrikes on Mrayjeh. According to Israeli media, it used “fortification-piercing bombs and dropped 73 tons of explosives, in an attempt to assassinate the head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council, Hashem Safieddine, a potential successor to the party’s former chief Hassan Nasrallah.” The attack was described as “the largest since the assassination of Nasrallah a week ago.”

More than 15 hours after the airstrikes, the fate of Safieddine and those who were meeting with him “in the deepest shelters,” as the Israelis described it, remains unclear. Hezbollah did not issue an official statement.

The Israeli military said: “We are still assessing the damage caused by the airstrikes that targeted Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in Beirut.”

Israel’s pursuit of Hezbollah extended on Friday morning to cutting off the main artery that connects Lebanon to Syria.

Less than 24 hours after Israel warned Lebanon not to use the Masnaa border crossing for Hezbollah military purposes, Israeli warplanes struck the Lebanese side of the land beyond the police post, creating a deep crater that cut off the road in both directions, completely disrupting traffic.

Thousands of Lebanese and Syrian civilians have fled to Syria to escape the war.

According to security reports, the Israeli military shelled “a Hezbollah tunnel on the border between Syria and Lebanon,” but the report has not been confirmed by either side.

Lebanese Minister of Public Works Ali Hamieh said that the Israeli raid “landed inside Lebanese territory, creating a four-meter-wide crater.”

Reporters in Bekaa said that “warplanes launched three missiles.”

People crossing the border, including women and children, were stuck on the road between the two border points for hours, which forced them to continue their journey on foot.

The Israeli military had previously bombed the Matraba border crossing between Syria and Lebanon in Hermel.

There are six legal crossings between Lebanon and Syria, in addition to dozens of illegal crossings used for smuggling and by Hezbollah.

Israeli raids on Beirut’s southern suburb, southern Lebanon and northern Bekaa continued on Friday, reaching flea markets in Tarya and blocking the main road that connects the village to its neighborhoods.

The raids also targeted Hermel, the surroundings of the Lebanese University in Beirut’s southern suburb, and a warehouse adjacent to Beirut’s airport, without affecting air traffic.

The Israeli military instructed on Friday the residents of over 20 villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate immediately and head north of Al-Awali River.

The warnings created a state of shock among residents, some of whom refused to evacuate and remained in their houses.

In Qlayaa, Father Pierre Al-Rahi of the St. George’s Maronite Church urged residents “not to leave the village despite the threats.

He said: “We are peaceful citizens and there are no military movements or facilities in our area.

“We took a final decision to protect our village from the entry of weapons and we promise not to leave.”

Rmeish — a predominantly Christian village on the southern border — was subject to Israeli hostilities for the first time.

A crisis cell was established next to Beirut’s port to provide shelters for displaced people in the areas of Keserwan and Mount Lebanon.

Hezbollah announced that it carried out several operations against Israeli military posts, including “bombing Krayot, north of Haifa, with a rocket salvo, and the Ilaniya base.”

The militant group also targeted “artillery emplacements in south of Kiryat Shmona, and a Merkava in the surroundings of Malkia with a guided missile.”

Israel’s Army Radio reported that “about 60 missiles were launched from Lebanon toward Israel since the morning.”

The Israeli military published footage of their incursion into the Lebanese border village of Kfarkila, where it found “dozens of weapons left behind by Hezbollah.”

The militant group, however, doubted the authenticity of the footage.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Beirut on a diplomatic mission having received special permission.

Last week, Lebanon prohibited an Iranian plane from landing due to Israel’s direct threats to Beirut air traffic control tower.

Araghchi held several meetings with a number of officials, affirming that “Iran stands with Lebanon and Hezbollah.”

He said: “We aren’t planning on continuing this war unless Israel decided to continue its hostilities.

“If the Israeli side took any measures against us, we will respond, and our response will be fully appropriate and studied.”

Araghchi noted that the Iranian attack against Israel “was an act of self-defense and in response to the attacks on Iranian interests,” adding that “we only hit military and security posts.”