Saudi Arabia renewed its aerial assault on Shiite rebels in Yemen and vowed to keep using force when needed, even as it backed the resumption of peace talks.
Fighter aircraft from the Saudi-led coalition attacked Houthi rebel militia and troops allied with former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh north of Aden, a southern port city, the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television channel reported yesterday.
In Ibb in central Yemen, residents reported an intense series of strikes early yesterday on Houthi positions and weapon warehouses in the region.
Photo: AFP
They said targets included a military base in the town of al-Kafr, unspecified sites in Hubaysh, as well as a college on the outskirts of Ibb and another in the city of Yarim.
In Aden late on Wednesday, five Houthi militiamen were killed at a checkpoint while fighting against local forces opposed to them.
In the province of Dalea, eight Houthi fighters died, also at a checkpoint late on Wednesday. Heavy clashes were continuing in the area, residents said.
Saudi Ambassador to the US Adel al-Jubeir said the coalition may continue strikes and still does not rule out sending ground troops, though he also said the kingdom hopes that its operation has paved the way for political negotiations.
The Saudis and their mostly Sunni Muslim allies announced an end to Operation Decisive Storm on Tuesday, saying it succeeded in destroying heavy weaponry and missiles held by the rebels. Saudi Arabia says Iran is behind the rise of the Houthis, a claim viewed with skepticism by many Western diplomats.
“The decision to calm matters now entirely rests with them,” al-Jubeir said of the rebels.
He said Saudi Arabia is providing support to militias fighting the Houthis, without giving details.
The Saudi-led bombing marked an escalation of the civil war in Yemen, a country located among major oilfields and adjacent to key shipping routes. Al-Qaeda has already benefited from a power vacuum in the country to establish a base there.
The Saudis and their allies are in discussions with the UN about how to revive talks on a political settlement, with the Saudis preferring to host the negotiations, according to a UN official who asked not to be identified, citing the sensitivity of the matter.
If the UN, which brokered previous rounds of talks before the Saudi-led intervention, continues to take the lead when talks resume, then it would choose to hold negotiations outside the Middle East, said a UN Security Council diplomat who also asked not to be identified.
Aid agencies have warned of deteriorating humanitarian conditions. The Yemeni Ministry of Health reported that major hospitals and facilities would soon be “completely unable to provide humanitarian and emergency services or to perform operations,” according to a WHO spokesman in comments carried on the UN Web site on Tuesday.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion