Yemen’s Houthi rebels yesterday announced their entry into the Middle East war by launching a ballistic missile toward Israel, as the world struggles to contain the economic damage of a conflict now entering its second month.
The intervention of Iran’s Yemeni allies into Tehran’s conflict with Israel and the US would spark concern about disruption to Red Sea shipping, with trade from the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz already choked off.
With Hormuz closed, many shipments to and from the region pass through the Omani port of Salalah, on the Arabian Sea, but Danish shipping giant Maersk said operations had been temporarily suspended after a drone attack injured one worker and damaged a crane. The war began when the US and Israel launched a wave of airstrikes across Iran, killing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, engulfing the Middle East in conflict and triggering global economic pain by sending oil and gas prices soaring.
Photo: AP
With no end to the conflict in sight, despite US President Donald Trump’s optimism that US forces have obliterated Iran’s military, a spokesman for the Houthis issued a video statement declaring that the group had launched ballistic missiles toward Israeli bases.
A few hours earlier, the Israeli military had said it had “identified the launch of a missile from Yemen toward Israeli territory, aerial defense systems are operating to intercept the threat.”
There were no reports of any casualties or damage in Israel, and the missile was reportedly intercepted.
Saudi Arabia has diverted a large proportion of its oil exports to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, to avoid the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran says it has closed to shipping from hostile powers — driving up energy prices worldwide.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS