Region

WASHINGTON/ DUBAI (AFP) — More than 20 countries have joined the US-led coalition to protect Red Sea shipping from attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

The Iran-backed Houthis have repeatedly targeted vessels in the vital shipping lane with strikes they say are in support of Palestinians in Gaza, where Israel is battling militant group Hamas.

"We've had over 20 nations now sign on to participate" in the coalition, Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder told journalists.

Ryder said the Huthis are "attacking the economic well-being and prosperity of nations around the world", effectively becoming "bandits along the international highway that is the Red Sea".

Coalition forces will “serve as a highway patrol of sorts, patrolling the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to respond to, and assist as necessary, commercial vessels that are transiting this vital international waterway,” he said, calling on the Houthis to cease their attacks.

Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel began a relentless bombardment of targets in Gaza, alongside a ground invasion, which Gaza’s Hamas government on Wednesday said has killed at least 20,000 people.

Those deaths have provoked widespread anger in the Middle East and provided an impetus for attacks by armed groups in the region, including the Houthi strikes on Red Sea shipping.

The United States announced the multinational Red Sea coalition on Monday, while the Houthis warned two days later that they would strike back if attacked.

Meanwhile, a drone strike damaged a ship off the coast of India on Saturday but caused no casualties, two maritime agencies said, with one reporting the merchant vessel was linked to Israel.

The attack caused a fire on board, according to the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, or UKMTO.

Ambrey, a maritime security firm, said the “Liberia-flagged chemical/products tanker... was Israel-affiliated” and had been on its way from Saudi Arabia to India.

Both agencies said the attack occurred 200 nautical miles southwest of Veraval, India.

The Indian navy said it had responded to a request for assistance.

“An aircraft was dispatched and it reached overhead the vessel and established safety of the involved ship and its crew,” a navy official told AFP.

“An Indian navy warship has also been dispatched so as to provide assistance as required.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the strike which came amid a flurry of drone and missile attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels on a vital shipping lane in the Red Sea.

Last month, an Israeli-owned cargo ship was hit in a suspected drone attack by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the Indian Ocean, according to a US official.

The Malta-flagged vessel managed by an Israeli-affiliated company was reportedly damaged when the unmanned aerial vehicle exploded close to it, according to Ambrey.

The Houthi rebels have launched more than 100 drone and missile attacks, targeting 10 merchant vessels involving more than 35 different countries, according to the Pentagon.

GENEVA — There are no longer any functional hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday, describing "unbearable" scenes of largely abandoned patients begging for food and water.

The UN health agency said it had led missions to two badly damaged hospitals, Al Shifa and Al Ahli, in the north of the Palestinian territory on Wednesday.

"Our staff are running out of words to describe the beyond catastrophic situation facing remaining patients and health workers," said Richard Peeperkorn, the WHO representative for the occupied Palestinian territory.

His comment came amid increasingly frantic diplomatic efforts to secure a pause in the war that Hamas says has already claimed 20,000 lives in Gaza, 70 per cent of them women and children.

WHO has already described Al Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza which last month was the focus of an extended Israeli army operation and has been devastated by Israeli bombardments, as “a bloodbath”.

The smaller Al Ahli hospital had since become the only place where surgeries were possible in the north, but its director said it had stopped operating on Tuesday after being stormed by the Israeli forces.

Dying ‘slowly and painfully’

The WHO-led mission revealed that Al Ahli, which just two days ago was “overwhelmed with patients needing emergency care”, was now “a shell of a hospital”, Peeperkorn told reporters in Geneva via video link from Jerusalem.

“There are no operating theatres anymore due to the lack of fuel, power, medical supplies and health workers, including surgeons and other specialists,” he added.

“It has completely stopped functioning.”

Of Gaza’s original 36 hospitals, only nine are now partially functional, all of them in the south.

“There are no functional hospitals left in the north.”

Hospitals, protected under international humanitarian law, have repeatedly been hit by Israeli strikes in Gaza since the war erupted.

Asked about the charge, Peeperkorn said “we on our missions have not seen anything of this on the ground”, adding that WHO was “not in a position to assert how any hospital is being used”.

Although Wednesday’s mission had aimed to deliver fuel, he said, the lack of security guarantees had meant they could only deliver medical supplies and medicines.

But that was not enough, he said.

“Without fuel, staff, and other essential needs, medicines won’t make a difference and all patients will die slowly and painfully.”

Al Ahli, he said, still counts around 10 staff striving to provide basic first aid, while around 80 patients are sheltering in a church within the hospital grounds and the orthopaedic section.

 ‘Too late’

Sean Casey, a WHO Emergency Medical Teams coordinator who was on the mission, described “unbelievable conditions”.

At Al Ahli, the team had walked through the courtyard, where bodies wrapped in white plastic sheeting piled up, and with automatic gunfire sounding nearby, he told journalists, speaking from Rafah in southern Gaza.

In the church, “We found a really unbearable scene,” Casey said, describing around 30 patients, including young children and some with serious trauma wounds begging, not for care but for water.

“At the moment, it is a place where people are waiting to die.”

He reiterated the increasingly urgent call for a ceasefire to allow sufficient amounts of aid in and also to evacuate more patients from Gaza.

Asked when whether time was running out, he said: “I think it is [already] too late.

“We are dealing with starving adults, children... Everywhere we go, people are asking us for food,” he said.

“Even in the hospitals, ...people with open, bleeding fractures, they ask for food.

“If that is not an indicator of the desperation, I don’t know what is.”

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Israel has ordered more evacuations in southern Gaza's main city as diplomats pressed on with efforts to secure a pause in the war that Hamas says has claimed 20,000 lives.

The United Nations said Israel had issued evacuation orders on Wednesday for large areas of Khan Yunis, where more than 140,000 displaced people were sheltering.

Israel told civilians to leave the north of the besieged Palestinian territory at the beginning of the conflict, urging them to seek safety in southern areas.

But as places for people to go continued to shrink, international outrage has mounted over the rising death toll.

The Hamas government's media office in the Gaza Strip said on Wednesday at least 20,000 people had been killed in the Palestinian territory since the war with Israel began.

It said 8,000 children and 6,200 women were among the dead.

UN relief chief Martin Griffiths deemed it a "tragic and shameful milestone".

In the southern city of Rafah, where fireballs and smoke rose after explosions on Wednesday, residents expressed hope that truce talks would succeed.

"I wish for a complete ceasefire, and to put an end to the series of death and suffering. It's been more than 75 days," said Kassem Shurrab, 25.

Truce talks

Hopes that Israel and Hamas could be inching towards another truce and hostage release deal have risen this week as the head of the Palestinian fighter group visited Egypt and talks were held in Europe.

Qatar-based Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh arrived in Egypt on Wednesday for talks with the country’s intelligence chief Abbas Kamel.

Haniyeh also met Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian but no details were released.

A Hamas official told AFP that “a total ceasefire and a retreat of the Israeli occupation army from the Gaza Strip are a precondition for any serious negotiation” on a hostage-prisoner swap.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there could be no ceasefire in Gaza before the “elimination” of Hamas.

And US President Joe Biden said of a fresh hostage release deal: “There’s no expectation at this point. But we are pushing it.”

Mossad Director David Barnea held a “positive meeting” in Warsaw this week with CIA chief Bill Burns and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, a source familiar with the talks told AFP.

Qatar, backed by Egypt and the United States, last month helped broker a first week-long truce that saw 80 Israeli hostages freed in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.

Tunnel network

Israel said on Wednesday its forces had uncovered a tunnel network used by Hamas leaders including Yahya Sinwar, the Islamist movement’s Gaza leader.

The military released footage it said showed the “large network” around Gaza City’s Palestine Square linking hideouts and residences.

The occupation army reported close-quarter combat and more than 300 strikes over the past day, while the death toll among its own forces rose to 134 inside Gaza.

An AFPTV live camera on Wednesday filmed two bombs hitting Rafah, where many of the territory’s estimated 1.9 million displaced have fled.

The health ministry in Gaza said Israeli strikes killed at least 12 Palestinians when houses and a mosque in Rafah “were targeted”.

It said later at least 30 more people were killed in an Israeli strike that hit two houses east of Khan Yunis.

Crowds swarmed the rubble, digging with shovels and a backhoe to try to free the victims. One blackened body lay under a blue blanket on the blood-soaked ground.

“Enough, enough of this. We have lost everything and we can’t take it anymore,” Samar Abu Luli, a woman in Rafah, said after Israeli strikes on the city’s Al Shabura neighbourhood.

UN impasse

The UN Security Council was due to try once again on Thursday to pass a resolution calling for a halt in fighting after previous efforts to win Washington’s backing fell short.

Israel has rejected the term “ceasefire”, and the US has used its veto twice to thwart resolutions opposed by Israel since the start of the war.

The United Arab Emirates is sponsoring a draft resolution on the conflict which has already been watered down to secure compromise, according to a draft version seen by AFP.

It calls for “the urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and for urgent steps towards a sustainable cessation of hostilities”.

International Crisis Group analyst Richard Gowan said: “There is a strong sense that Biden will make the final decision on this.”

Israel, which declared a total siege on Gaza at the start of the war, has since allowed aid trucks through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and, as of this week, its own Kerem Shalom crossing.

The World Food Progamme said Wednesday it had delivered food through Kerem Shalom in a first direct aid convoy from Jordan and warned of the “risk of starvation”.

Hizbollah fighting

The war has sparked fears of regional escalation, with exchanges of fire over the Lebanon border, and missiles from Iran-backed Yemeni rebels disrupting Red Sea shipping.

Israel said on Wednesday it had struck an “operational command centre” used by Iran-backed Hizbollah fighters and fired on fighters heading for the Lebanon-Israel border.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who have launched missiles and drones at cargo ships in the Red Sea, warned on Wednesday that they would strike back if attacked by US forces.

The warning came after the United States said it was building up a multinational naval task force to protect vessels transiting the Red Sea from Houthi attacks carried out in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — The leader of Hamas travelled to Egypt on Wednesday as hopes grew that Israel and the Palestinian resistance group may be inching towards another truce and hostage release deal in the Gaza war.

The Qatar-based Hamas chief, Ismail Haniyeh, arrived in Cairo for discussions on the "aggression in the Gaza Strip and other matters", the group said in a statement.

He was due to meet Egypt's spy chief for talks on "stopping the aggression and the war to prepare an agreement for the release of prisoners", a source close to the group told AFP.

Haniyeh, who earlier met Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Qatar, was heading a "high-level delegation" to Egypt, a frequent mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, the source said.

US news site Axios reported on Monday that Israeli Mossad chief David Barnea had met CIA Director Bill Burns and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al thani in Europe.

Qatar, backed by Egypt and the United States, helped broker a week-long truce in November in which 80 Israeli hostages were freed in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.

A source close to Hamas told AFP the Egypt talks would focus on proposals including a week-long truce that would see the release of 40 Israeli hostages, including women, children and male non-combatants.

The truce would be open to extension if there is agreement on new conditions for further releases, the source said, adding that the proposals had been discussed between Qatar and Israel with the knowledge of the US administration.

Israel began a campaign of bombardment on Gaza on October 7, and then a ground invasion, that Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says have killed 19,667 people, mostly women and children.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog also said on Tuesday his country was “ready for another humanitarian pause and additional humanitarian aid in order to enable the release of hostages”.

Another Palestinian resistance group, Islamic Jihad, meanwhile, released video footage it claimed showed two hostages in its custody in Gaza, ramping up pressure on Israel.

The UN Security Council was set to vote later on Wednesday on a resolution calling for a pause in the conflict, three diplomatic sources told AFP, after two previous votes were delayed as members wrangled over wording.

The latest version of the text calls for the “suspension” of hostilities, the sources said.

The US vetoed a previous ceasefire resolution, sparking condemnation by humanitarian groups, which urged more action to help civilians caught in the conflict.

For now, fighting was raging unabated after Israeli forces spokesman Daniel Hagari said Tuesday that troops were expanding operations in southern Gaza’s Khan Yunis area.

“We must dismantle Hamas, and it will take as long as needed,” he said, as the army reported 133 soldiers had been killed since ground operations began in late October.

Hamas sources said Wednesday at least 11 people were killed overnight in Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip.

In Khan Yunis, residents searched by hand through the rubble of a building completely flattened by a strike.

The house was “full of people, full of human beings, why did they bomb it? What’s the reason?” said one distraught young resident, Amr Sheikh-Deeb.

“We managed to remove some bodies, but where are the rest of them? What did these people do?”

The UN estimates 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced and concerns are growing about the limited ability of aid groups to help.

“Amid displacement at an unimaginable scale and active hostilities, the humanitarian response system is on the brink,” said Tor Wennesland, the UN’s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process.

Gazans are facing a perilous winter, and the UN children’s agency warned that “child deaths due to disease could surpass those killed in bombardments”.

The United States, while strongly backing Israel, has also urged it to protect civilians in Gaza.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron called on Israel to take a “much more surgical, clinical and targeted approach” in its battle against Hamas.

Red Sea attacks 

The Gaza war has sparked fears of regional escalation and seen Israel trade deadly cross-border fire with Iran-backed Hizbollah fighters in southern Lebanon.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, meanwhile, have repeatedly fired missiles and drones at vessels passing through the Red Sea that they say are linked to Israel, in a show of support for Palestinians.

Major shipping firms have diverted their vessels as a result, taking the much lengthier route around Africa.

The United States announced a new multinational naval task force on Monday to protect the waterway leading to the Suez Canal, through which more than 10 percent of global trade transits.

It now includes warships from the United States, which has its USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier in the area, as well as Britain, Canada, France, Italy and other countries.

A top Houthi official warned the rebels will keep up their attacks and that any country that acts against them “will have its ships targeted in the Red Sea”.

GENEVA — The United Nations warned on Wednesday of widespread rights abuses amid fighting near the former Sudan safe haven of Wad Madani, with dozens of civilians reportedly killed, including in ethnically-motivated attacks.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces on Sunday set up a base near Wad Madani, where their offensive has sent thousands fleeing Sudan's second city and former aid hub, many of them already displaced.

"I am very alarmed by recurring reports of widespread abuses and violations of human rights in recent days amid fighting between the Sudan Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces in Wad Madani," UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.

Turk also voiced concern at the "dire" humanitarian situation in the wider Al-Jezira State, which hosts nearly half a million internally displaced people. while at least 250,000 people had been displaced.

Since Sudan's war erupted on April 15 between army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, the city of Wad Madani, 180 kilometres  south of Khartoum, became a haven for thousands of displaced people during the conflict.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement that the city's population had reached 700,000, after more than half a million people took shelter there, among them 270,000 who need humanitarian assistance.

“Reports indicate that dozens of civilians including medical personnel were killed and many more injured in Wadi Madani between 15 and 19 December,” Turk said.

“Some of the attacks were allegedly ethnically motivated.”

Turk also pointed to reports of mutilations and looting, and an attack on a hospital.

Dozens of people had also reportedly been detained by both sides, “including some on the basis of their ethnic and tribal affiliations”, he said.

“Once again, I urge... the SAF and the RSF to respect international humanitarian and human rights law,” Turk said.

He insisted that both parties “must protect civilians and civilian objects. Attacks targeting civilians, including specifically protected persons like medical personnel, as well as civilian objects, including hospitals, are prohibited”.

“They must also protect humanitarian workers and human rights defenders, whose work is especially important in critical circumstances such as these, and ensure civilians have necessary access to much-needed humanitarian assistance,” he said.

DUBAI — The United States on Monday said it was setting up an international maritime coalition to counter escalating attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels on vital Red Sea shipping lanes.

"These attacks are reckless, dangerous, and they violate international law," US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin told a news conference during a visit to Israel.

"We're taking action to build an international coalition to address this threat," Austin said. "This is not just a US issue. This is an international problem, and it deserves an international response."

 He said a virtual meeting on Tuesday would bring together ministers from Middle Eastern countries to address the issue, and warned Iran to stop supporting the Houthi attacks.

Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels said earlier they had attacked two "Israeli-linked" vessels in the Red Sea in solidarity with Gaza, as more companies halt transit through the troubled but vital waterway.

The attacks on the Norwegian-owned Swan Atlantic and another ship identified by the Houthis as the MSC Clara are the latest in a flurry of maritime incidents that are disrupting global trade in an attempt to pressure Israel over its war against Hamas fighters.

In a statement, the Yemeni rebels said they had carried out a "military operation against two ships linked to the Zionist entity" using naval drones.

They vowed to “continue to prevent all ships heading to Israeli ports... from navigating in the Arab and Red Seas” until more food and medicine is allowed into Gaza.

But the Swan Atlantic’s owner, Norway’s Inventor Chemical Tankers, said in a statement the ship was carrying biofuel feedstock from France to Reunion Island.

It said the vessel has “no Israeli link” and was managed by a Singaporean firm, adding that the Indian crew were unharmed and the vessel sustained limited damage.

Shipping crisis

British oil giant BP became the latest to suspend transit through the Red Sea on Monday, while Taiwan shipping firm Evergreen said it was suspending its Israeli cargo shipments with immediate effect.

Frontline, one of the world’s largest tanker companies, also said it was rerouting ships and would “only allow new business” that could be routed via South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.

That route is far longer and uses more fuel.

The Red Sea attacks have forced insurance companies to significantly increase premiums on ships, making it uneconomical for some to transit through the Suez Canal.

Italian-Swiss giant Mediterranean Shipping Company, France’s CMA CGM, Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd, Belgium’s Euronav and Denmark’s A.P Moller-Maersk, the latter accounting for 15 per cent of global container freight, have all stopped using the Red Sea until further notice.

The attacks have become “a maritime security crisis” with “commercial and economic implications in the region and beyond”, Torbjorn Soltvedt of analysis firm Verisk Maplecroft told AFP.

US efforts

Monday’s attack took place as the Pentagon chief visited Israel after a stop in Bahrain, home base of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

“In the Red Sea, we’re leading a multinational maritime taskforce to uphold the bedrock principle of freedom of navigation. Iran’s support for Houthi attacks on commercial vessels must stop,” Austin said.

 On Saturday, a US destroyer shot down 14 drones in the Red Sea launched from rebel-controlled areas of Yemen, the US military said.

Britain said one of its destroyers had also brought down a suspected attack drone in the area.

Rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdul Salam said neutral Oman had launched mediation efforts to safeguard shipping using the waterway.

“Under the sponsorship of our brothers in the Sultanate of Oman, communication and discussion continue with a number of international parties regarding operations in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea,” he said on X, formerly Twitter.

BAGHDAD — Iraqis voted on Monday in the first provincial council elections held in a decade, which were expected to strengthen the dominance of Shiite groups.

The vote comes at a time of widespread political apathy and disillusionment in the oil-rich country of 43 million that is still recovering from years of war.

Polls closed as planned at 6:00 pm (15:00 GMT), state media reported, with the election commission saying preliminary results were expected 24 hours later.

Turnout at noon had reached just 17 percent, said election commission official Omar Ahmed, who urged voters to come out and “contribute to the success of the electoral process”.

Until polls closed, AFP journalists observed low attendance at three polling stations in Baghdad and in the southern city of Nasiriyah, where voters arrived one by one.

The vote is seen as a key test for Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani — who rose to power just over a year ago, backed by pro-Tehran parties — ahead of a general election due in 2025.

The provincial councils, set up after the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, choose regional governors and manage budgets for health, transport and education.

Influential Shiite cleric and political kingmaker Moqtada Sadr, a one-time militia leader who has launched anti-government protests in the past, has boycotted the vote.

‘Economic populism’

Sudani, after casting his ballot in Baghdad, hailed the councils as “a pillar of the executive” which help the government implement policies.

The premier has pledged to boost public services and rebuild infrastructure ravaged by decades of conflict and turmoil.

He urged Iraqis to elect “honest” representatives. Some 17 million people are eligible to vote, with 6,000 candidates vying for just 285 council seats.

But many voters in the young democracy voiced little interest.

“What use are these elections to us?” said a Baghdad taxi driver who gave his name only as Abu Ali, 45.

“The years pass, elections come around again, the candidates change, and our situation stays the same.”

Civil servant Amin Saleh, 63, voiced greater enthusiasm as he cast his ballot in the capital.

“If I don’t come and vote, and nobody else does either, there’ll be chaos,” he told AFP. “We need someone to represent us. How do you achieve that except by voting?”

Lamia Mahmud, a 59-year-old civil servant, voted to “build the country. We want to develop the country, we do not want to stay behind,” she said.

Renad Mansour, a senior research fellow at think tank Chatham House, told AFP that in the end, turnout is “the ultimate gauge of satisfaction”.

It shows “whether the Sudani government’s economic populism — the policy of giving out [public sector] jobs — can be successful and can capture the young population”.

Elections were held in 15 provinces, but not in the three which make up an autonomous Kurdish region in the north.

One quarter of candidates are women under a system that also reserves quotas for the Christian, Yazidi and Sabian minorities.

The election is expected to boost the ruling Iran-aligned bloc called the Coordination Framework coalition.

It brings together Shiite Islamist parties with factions of the Hashed Al Shaabi, a network of former paramilitary units that have been integrated into the regular security forces.

Mansour said some alliance heavyweights hope the elections will “prove they have a social base and that they are popular” following disappointing results in 2021 national elections.

Tensions around the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza were not seen as a major factor in the elections, despite recent drone attacks against US-led coalition troops based in Iraq.

Voting was held amid tight security, but Interior Minister Abdel Amir Al Shammari told reporters no breaches had been reported during the day.

Observers kept a close eye on the oil-rich northern province of Kirkuk where historic rivalries could resurface between parties representing its Arab, Kurdish and Turkmen communities.