Region

RIYADH — Saudi Arabian authorities shuttered schools in several regions on Wednesday as flash floods inundated roads, the latest instance of heavy rains disrupting life in the desert Gulf.

AFPTV footage showed partially submerged cars struggling to drive through standing water in the central region of Qassim, one of the areas hit hardest overnight.

"The rain continued for seven hours from the afternoon until near midnight in very large quantities," said Mohammed, an Egyptian resident of Buraidah, capital of Qassim, who spoke to AFP on the condition that only his first name be used.

"Water accumulated to a height of more than 10 centimetres in front of the residence and prevented us from going out to the street. The sound of thunder was loud and lightning was illuminating the city."

The national meteorological centre issued red alerts for Qassim and other areas including eastern province on the Gulf, the capital Riyadh and Medina province bordering the Red Sea.

It warned of "heavy rain with strong wind, lack of horizontal visibility, hail, torrential rains and thunderbolts".

Schools in Eastern Province and Riyadh also cancelled in-person instruction and moved classes online.

The Medina education department posted on X pictures of maintenance workers repairing electricity and air-conditioning units and removing standing water from schools.

There was some standing water on Riyadh’s roads on Wednesday but traffic was not significantly disrupted.

Rainstorms and flooding are not unheard of in Saudi Arabia, especially in winter, and larger, more densely populated cities can struggle with drainage.

Such problems are an annual occurrence in Jeddah, the port city on the Red Sea coast, where residents have long decried poor infrastructure.

Floods killed 123 people in the city in 2009 and 10 more two years later.

This week’s heavy rainfall in Saudi Arabia follows the intense rains that lashed the region in mid-April, killing 21 people in Oman and four in the United Arab Emirates, which received the heaviest rainfall since records began 75 years ago.

Global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions “most likely” exacerbated those rains, an expert group of scientists said in a study published last week.

DUBAI — Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for attacks on Monday along the Red Sea shipping route, including on a Greek commercial vessel, according to a British maritime agency and the US military.

The US Central Command, or CENTCOM, said the Houthis had targeted MV Cyclades, a Greek commercial vessel flying the Maltese flag, with three anti-ship ballistic missiles and three drone strikes.

"Initial reports indicate there were no injuries and the vessel continued on its way," CENTCOM posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Earlier, the UK maritime security agency (UKMTO) reported explosions "in close proximity" to a commercial ship sailing off the Yemeni coast northwest of Mokha.

"Vessel and crew are reported safe," the agency, run by the Royal Navy, added.

Maritime security firm Ambrey said the Malta-flagged container ship was en route from Djibouti to Jeddah and was likely targeted "due to its listed operator's ongoing trade with Israel".

Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for firing at the Cyclades, MSC Orion and two US vessels.

The Iran-backed group, which controls the Yemeni capital Sanaa and much of the country’s Red Sea coast, has launched a flurry of attacks against ships since November.

It says their campaign is in solidarity with Palestinians amid the Gaza war.

CENTCOM also said that US forces shot down an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) over the Red Sea on Monday morning as it was headed on a flight path “towards USS Philippine Sea and USS Laboon”.

“The UAV presented an imminent threat to US, coalition, and merchant vessels in the region,” it wrote on X, adding that there had been no injuries or damage reported by US forces or nearby commercial ships.

Since January, the United States and Britain have launched repeated strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen in response to the ship attacks.

BEIRUT — France's top diplomat on Sunday urged calm in Lebanon during his second visit to the country since cross-border tensions with Israel flared on the back of the war in Gaza.

Israel and Lebanon's Iran-backed Hizbollah group have exchanged near-daily fire since Hamas's unprecedented surprise attack on southern Israel on October 7 sparked the war in Gaza.

Fighting has intensified in recent weeks, with Israel striking deeper into Lebanese territory, while Hezbollah has stepped up its missile and drone attacks on military positions in northern Israel.

France has for months sought to de-escalate the cross-border tensions, presenting to both Lebanon and Israel an initiative in January seeking to end hostilities.

During a visit to the headquarters of the United Nations' peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL), French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne reiterated that Paris has been making proposals to "avoid war in Lebanon".

"I will head to Beirut to meet political authorities to... make proposals," he added. "Our responsibility is to mitigate escalation, and that is also our role in UNIFIL. We have 700 soldiers here."

A French diplomatic source told AFP that the volume of cross-border attacks had doubled since April 13.

Sejourne is set to meet Lebanese officials on Sunday afternoon ahead of holding a press conference.

In March, Beirut submitted its response to the French initiative, which was based on a UN resolution barring the presence of any forces other than the Lebanese military and UNIFIL in south Lebanon.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who heads a caretaker government with reduced powers, on Friday suggested that Paris was reviewing its proposal and would submit a new one to Beirut.

Sejourne’s trip — which will also see him stop in Riyadh for a summit on Gaza — coincides with a visit to Jerusalem by US envoy Amos Hochstein as Washington also pushes for de-escalation along the Israel-Lebanon border.

Hizbollah has repeatedly declared that only a ceasefire in Gaza will put an end to its attacks on Israel.

Since October 8 at least 385 people have been killed in Lebanon, including 254 Hizbollah fighters and dozens of civilians, according to an AFP tally.

Israel says 11 soldiers and nine civilians have been killed on its side of the border.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Hamas said it was studying on Saturday the latest Israeli counterproposal regarding a potential ceasefire in Gaza, a day after a delegation from mediator Egypt reportedly arrived in Israel in a bid to jump-start stalled negotiations.

The signs of fresh truce talks came alongside ongoing Israeli preparations for a military push into Gaza's southern city of Rafah and as spillover from the war led to continued attacks across the region.

"Today, the Hamas movement received the official Zionist occupation response to the movement's position, which was delivered to the Egyptian and Qatari mediators on April 13," Khalil Al Hayya, deputy head of Hamas's political arm in Gaza, said in a brief statement early Saturday.

"The movement will study this proposal, and upon completion of its study, it will submit its response."

Hamas had previously insisted on a permanent ceasefire, something rejected by Israel.

Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been unsuccessfully trying to seal a new truce deal in Gaza ever since a one-week halt to the fighting in November saw 80 Israeli hostages exchanged for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

Several Israeli media outlets, citing unnamed officials, said Israel's war Cabinet had discussed a new plan for a truce and hostage release ahead of the Egyptian delegation's visit.

There has been "noticeable progress in bringing the views of the Egyptian and Israeli delegations closer", said Al Qahera News, which is linked to Egyptian state intelligence services.

The war in Gaza was also on the agenda for an international summit set to kick off in Saudi Arabia over the weekend.

The World Economic Forum special meeting, scheduled to begin in Riyadh on Sunday, will include a Gaza-focused session on Monday set to feature newly appointed Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Mustafa, Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and Sigrid Kaag, the United Nations aid coordinator for the Gaza Strip.

“Discussions with European, American and regional counterparts on Gaza and the regional situation are planned in Riyadh,” a diplomatic source said on Friday.

‘Miracle’ baby dies

Witnesses in besieged Gaza reported fresh Israeli strikes overnight into Saturday around Rafah, the last urban centre Israeli ground forces have yet to enter.

Plans for an Israeli incursion into the city, which military leaders say is necessary to uproot Hamas battalions, have sparked opposition among the international community due to the presence of hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians seeking refuge there.

Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad told AFP on Thursday that such an operation “will undoubtedly threaten the negotiations” and show “that Israel is interested in continuing the war”.

The war began with the unprecedented Hamas sudden attack on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,356 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Israel estimates that 129 hostages are still being held by Hamas in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.

On Friday, missiles fired from an Israeli jet hit Gaza City, killing at least three people in the Rimal neighbourhood, an AFP reporter said.

“I was sitting selling cigarettes and suddenly a missile fell, shaking the whole area,” a witness who did not give his name told AFP, adding that the bodies of a man, a woman and a little girl were pulled from the rubble.

Meanwhile, a baby delivered from her dying mother’s womb in Rafah on the weekend has died, the girl’s uncle said. When she was born, doctors hailed her as a “miracle”.

But Rami Al Sheikh told AFP on Friday that his niece Ruh had “joined her family in the gardens of eternity”, after her mother was fatally wounded in an Israeli strike.

‘Hands off Rafah’

Opposition to an Israeli military operation in Rafah extended to university campuses across the United States, where hundreds of students have been arrested at pro-Palestinian protests.

“Stop the invasion! Hands off Rafah!” said a sign at a pro-Palestinian encampment at George Washington University in the US capital.

Israel’s military offensive has turned vast swathes of Gaza into rubble, creating 37 million tonnes of debris that will take years to clear away, according to the UN Mine Action Service.

The World Food Programme has warned that famine is “a real and dangerous threat” in Gaza.

The European Union said Friday it was giving an extra $73 million in aid to Palestinians in Gaza “in light of the continued deterioration of the severe humanitarian crisis”.

BEIRUT — Three people were killed Saturday in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon, including two members of Hizbollah, the Iran-backed movement and official media said.

The border between Lebanon and Israel has seen near-daily exchanges of fire since the Israeli war on Gaza began nearly seven months ago.

Hizbollah has intensified its targeting of military sites in Israel since tensions soared between Israel and Iran over the bombing of Tehran's Damascus consulate on April 1, widely blamed on Israel.

In two separate statements, Hizbollah mourned the deaths of two fighters from the villages of Kafr Kila and Khiam.

It said they had been "martyred on the road to Jerusalem", the phrase it uses to refer to members killed by Israeli fire.

Lebanon's official National News Agency said "Israeli occupation aircraft carried out two raids today at dawn on the towns of Kafr Shuba and Shebaa", leading to the death of "citizen Qasim Asaad in the town of Kafr Shuba".

Multiple villages in southern Lebanon had been hit by Israeli strikes in recent hours, leaving damage to homes and property, NNA said.

Hizbollah said separately that it targeted "newly established positions of enemy soldiers" west of Shumira in northern Israel, the day after it targeted two military sites with dozens of Katyusha rockets in response to an Israeli strike on Friday.

Pro-Hamas Lebanese fighter group Jamaa Islamiya on Friday said that two of its senior commanders were killed in an Israeli strike in eastern Lebanon.

The Israeli army announced on Friday that its air force “aircraft struck and eliminated Mosab Khalaf in the area of Meidun in Lebanon”, describing him as a “senior terrorist in the Jamaa Islamiya terrorist organisation”.

Khalaf had “advanced a large number of terror attacks against Israel”, the army said.