Region

DUBAI — Yemen's government and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels have agreed to halt tit-for-tat banking sanctions as they wrestle for control of the country's financial institutions, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The Houthis have been fighting a Saudi-led coalition since March 2015, months after they seized the capital Sanaa and most of Yemen's population centres, forcing the internationally recognised government south to Aden.

The rebels and the government had in December committed to a UN-led roadmap to end the war, agreeing to work towards "the resumption of an inclusive political process".

But Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping since November and subsequent US and British retaliation have put peace talks on hold.

On Monday, the two sides informed Hans Grundberg, the UN envoy to Yemen, that they "agreed on several measures to de-escalate", said a statement from Grundberg's office, which thanked Saudi Arabia for its "significant role" in brokering the deal.

It came as the warring parties were locked in a fight for control over the country's banks, with both facing a severe financial crunch.

Their latest agreement involves "cancelling all the recent decisions and procedures against banks by both sides and refraining in the future from any similar decisions or procedures", the envoy's office said.

In May, the government-controlled central bank banned transactions with six banks in Houthi-held Sanaa for failing to abide by an order to relocate to Aden.

As a result, currency exchange offices, money transfer agencies and banks in government-held areas could no longer work with those financial institutions. 

The rebels, who run their own central bank and use different bank notes with different exchange rates, said the move was a disguised attempt by the United States and Saudi Arabia to exert financial pressure on the Houthi banking system.

The Houthis retaliated by banning any dealings with 13 banks in Aden, which means those in rebel-held areas could no longer receive remittances through them or withdraw and deposit funds.

 ‘Welcome’ step 

After striking their latest agreement, the warring parties will convene “meetings to discuss all economic and humanitarian issues based on the (UN) roadmap,” said Grundberg’s office.

It stressed “the need for the parties to collaborate towards an economy that benefits all Yemenis and supports the implementation of a nationwide ceasefire and the resumption of an inclusive political process”.

The statement said the warring parties have also agreed to settle disputes over Yemenia, the country’s national airline, which has accused the Houthis of freezing its funds held in Sanaa banks. 

Meetings will be “convened to address the administrative, technical, and financial challenges faced by the company,” the statement said.

Yemenia flights will resume between Sanaa and Jordan, and the number of trips will be raised to three daily, according to the deal. Yemenia will also operate flights to Cairo and India “daily or as needed”, the statement said.

Speaking at the UN Security Council later on Tuesday, Grundberg called the deal, which followed months of negotiations, a “welcome” step but stressed that deeper commitments were needed.

“Stop-gap measures might serve as bandaids but will not provide for sustainable solutions nor will they reasonably pave the way for a nationwide ceasefire and a political process without sustained dialogue,” he said, urging direct negotiations between the warring parties.

Despite the expiry in 2022 of a six-month truce, levels of violence have largely remained low. But “we risk a return to full-scale war,” the UN envoy said.

“Over the past month, we have witnessed an increase in military preparation and reinforcement,” he told the council, adding that clashes have been reported on several frontlines across the country, although they have remained contained.

Gaza Strip, Palestinian Territories — The health ministry in Gaza said Monday that an Israeli operation launched in Khan Yunis has killed 70 people and wounded over 200 others, a toll AFP could not immediately verify.

"Due to the Israeli occupation's attacks and massacres in Khan Yunis governorate from the early hours of this morning until now, 70 people have been martyred and more than 200 wounded," the ministry said in a statement. The Israeli military did not offer comment on the toll, when asked by AFP.

Thousands of Gazans fled an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone Monday after the army ordered them to leave and warned of an imminent operation in response to rocket attacks.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on his way to Washington to deliver a crucial speech at what he said was a time of "great political uncertainty", following US President Joe Biden's decision not to seek re-election.

Netanyahu will meet Biden, who has pushed him to agree to a ceasefire with Hamas, more than nine months into the Gaza war ignited by the Palestinian militant group's October 7 attacks on Israel.

Fighting raged in Gaza as the Israeli military ordered Palestinians to evacuate part of a humanitarian zone, just two months after directing them there for their own safety.

The military said it issued the order to leave the eastern Khan Yunis sector of the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone as it was "about to forcefully operate" to curb rocket fire.

Facing yet another displacement, Palestinians filled the dusty streets of Khan Yunis with cars, motorbikes, donkey-drawn carts, and on foot, carrying what belongings they could.

Hassan Qudayh said his family fled in "panic".

"We were happily making breakfast for our children, as we had been safe for a month, only to be stunned by shells, warning leaflets and martyrs in the streets," he told AFPTV.

"This is the 14th or 15th time we've been displaced.

"We want peace, not war. We want to be united. Enough! We've been suffering for 10 months."

'Tired and fed up' 

Hamas's October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Israel's military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 39,006 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

The relentless fighting has plunged Gaza into a severe humanitarian crisis.

Yussef Abu Taimah from Al-Qarara in Khan Yunis said his family went to the humanitarian zone but found no space. 

"Even the sidewalks are full of people and tents. We are tired and fed up. Enough of this displacement and migration".

In scorching summer heat, Palestinians at the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza scoured ruins for water needed for drinking, bathing, and laundry.

For the Shanbari family, water is so precious they try not to spill a single drop.

Exhausted from the constant struggle for basics, the parents say their children are sick.

"All my children have fallen ill -- they're suffering from kidney failure, jaundice, itching, and cough," said Ahmed al-Shanbari. "I don't know what to say, and there aren't even any medicines available."

Nearby, huge sewage puddles, sometimes pond-sized, cover the roads.

Israel on Saturday attacked Yemen for the first time, in retaliation for a deadly drone strike on Tel Aviv by the Iran-backed Huthi rebels.

There were also further exchanges of fire between Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement and the Israeli military at the weekend, as tensions remained high along the border.

On Sunday, Netanyahu's office said he was sending a negotiating team for new talks on a truce deal. He said the delegation would leave on Thursday, but it remains unclear where it will go.

Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been working unsuccessfully for months to secure a deal between Israel and Hamas.

JABALIA, Palestinian Territories — To get his family the water they need for drinking, bathing and laundry, Ahmed al-Shanbari steels himself for a lengthy search through the north of the Gaza Strip.

Shanbari said most of the wells near his makeshift shelter in the Jabalia refugee camp have been destroyed.

And the water distribution network barely works after more than nine months of war that has devastated Gaza's infrastructure.

Water was already scarce before the conflict erupted in October, and most of it was undrinkable. The 2.4 million population relies on an increasingly polluted and depleted aquifer, humanitarian agencies say.

To collect what little of the fetid supply remains can take Shanbari four hours in sweltering heat.

He sets off with his three children, buckets in hand, weaving through mounds of rubble and trash in search of a working spigot or an aid agency hose connected to a water truck.

"We are suffering greatly to obtain water," he told AFP.

Shanbari said the situation has worsened since heavy fighting broke out in Jabalia in May between the Israeli army and Hamas.

"After the last incursion, not a single well remains," he said.

'Exhausted' 

The UN humanitarian office OCHA said most of Gaza's groundwater was contaminated with sewage even before the war. More than 97 percent was unsafe to drink.

Today, many aid groups describe the situation in Gaza as "catastrophic".

For weeks, Palestinians in Gaza have told AFP journalists about the intense thirst that drives them to delirium, their dreams of a cup of tea and the humiliation of being unable to wash.

For the Shanbari family, water is so precious they try not to spill a single drop after finding it.

From the jerrycans they haul home, they carefully transfer the water into basins for cleaning dishes and pitchers for bathing.

The parents say they are "exhausted" by the constant struggle to get the barest of necessities, and their children are sick.

"All my children have fallen ill, they're suffering from kidney failure, jaundice, itching, cough," said Shanbari. "I don't know what to say, and there aren't even medicines available in the north."

Not far from the Shanbari home, huge puddles of sewage, sometimes as big as ponds, cover the roads.

Inoperable 

Even if he could locate a well with water, Shanbari said there is no fuel in the north to run the pumps needed to extract it.

Wastewater treatment plants are also reportedly shutting down because of the lack of fuel and fighting.

An expert on water infrastructure in the Gaza Strip described the territory's water distribution system as effectively inoperable.

Only a ceasefire could get it back up and running again, he said, given the need for spare parts and experts to access the stations and wells.

The Israeli military on Sunday maintained that water collection points were accessible in the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone, to which it has ordered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to move.

But people are afraid to go there after Israeli strikes on Al-Mawasi killed at least 92 people and wounded 300 on July 13, according to the health ministry in the territory.

Israel, UN agencies and the Palestinian Authority have all raised the prospect of resupplying electricity from Israel to a desalination plant and a water treatment plant in Gaza.

But the local electricity distribution company said the line was still too damaged to distribute power.

NASIRIYAH, Iraq — Iraq hanged 10 "terror" convicts on Monday, officials said, in the fourth such execution in three months, prompting a rights group to call for an end to the death penalty.

Courts have handed down hundreds of death and life imprisonment sentences in recent years to Iraqis convicted of "terrorism", in trials rights groups have denounced as hasty.

Under Iraqi law, terrorism and murder offences are punishable by death, and execution decrees must be signed by the president.

A health official said 10 Iraqis "convicted of terrorism crimes and of being members of the Daesh terror group were executed by hanging" at Al-Hut prison in the southern city of Nasiriyah.

A security source confirmed the executions.

They were hanged under Article 4 of the anti-terrorism law and the health department had received their bodies, the health official told AFP.

The sources spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Al-Hut is a notorious prison in Nasiriyah whose Arabic name means "the whale", because Iraqis believe those jailed there never walk out alive.

Iraq has been criticised for the trials, with the "terrorism" offence carrying the death penalty regardless of whether the defendant had been an active fighter.

On May 31, Iraq executed eight people convicted of "terrorism". Eleven people were hanged on April 22 and another such group was executed on May 6, security and health sources said.

In June, UN experts said they were "alarmed by the high number of executions publicly reported since 2016, nearly 400, including 30 this year."

"When arbitrary executions are on a widespread and systematic basis, they may amount to crimes against humanity," said the special rapporteurs including the expert on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary execution.

They added that according to official records there are 8,000 prisoners on death row in Iraq.

'Halt executions' 

The experts urged Iraqi authorities to "halt all executions".

They also said they were "horrified" by the high number of reported deaths in Nasiriyah prison due to "torture and deplorable conditions".

The experts, who are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, do not speak on behalf of the United Nations.

Rights groups have also denounced the proceedings as rushed, warning confessions were sometimes believed to have been obtained under torture.

"Iraq's continuous implementation of the death penalty -- despite national and international outcry -- means we could be hurdling toward a human catastrophe unfolding on its death row," said Amnesty International's Iraq researcher, Razaw Salihy.

She said Iraqi authorities "must halt executions immediately in order to address the gross injustices that landed thousands on death row and the horrendous conditions they languish in".

The Daesh group overran large swathes of Iraq and neighbouring Syria in 2014, proclaiming its "caliphate" and launching a reign of terror.

It was defeated in Iraq in 2017 by Iraqi forces backed by a US-led military coalition, and in 2019 lost the last territory it held in Syria to US-backed Kurdish forces.

But its remnants continue to carry out deadly hit-and-run attacks and ambushes, particularly from remote areas and desert hideouts.

HODEIDA, Yemen — Yemen's Houthi rebels promised a "huge" retaliation against Israel on Sunday following a deadly strike on the port of Hodeida, as violence sparked by the Gaza war gripped the region.

Israel bombed the Palestinian territory, Lebanon and Yemen in quick succession this week in response to attacks from Iran-backed militant groups.

Despite Washington asserting that a deal to end more than nine months of devastating war between Israel and Hamas was near the "goal line", the Israeli military said it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen as it pressed on with its offensive in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Dozens have been killed since Saturday across Gaza, the civil defence agency said, including in strikes on homes in the central Nuseirat and Bureij areas and displaced people near southern Khan Yunis.

Residents said a major operation was underway in the Saudi district west of Rafah in the south, reporting heavy artillery and clashes.

The deadly strikes in Gaza came hours after Hizbollah and its ally Hamas said they fired at Israeli positions from south Lebanon, while Yemen’s Houthi rebels vowed to respond to Israeli warplanes hitting a key port.

On Sunday, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said the rebel’s “response to the Israeli aggression against our country is inevitably coming and will be huge”.

The fire left raging by the strikes on rebel-held Hodeida Port “is seen across the Middle East and the significance is clear,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Saturday.

The Houthis control swathes of Yemen, including much of its Red Sea coast, while the internationally recognised government has withdrawn to Aden on the south coast.

Detailing the first strikes claimed by Israel in Yemen, Gallant warned of further operations if the Houthis “dare to attack us” after a rebel drone strike killed one in Tel Aviv on Friday.

In Hodeida, three people were killed and 87 wounded, health officials said in a statement carried by Houthi media.

Firefighters struggled to contain the massive blaze caused by the strike on Hodeida, with a port employee saying fuel storage tanks and a power plant were still on fire on Sunday.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanon's Hizbollah on Sunday said it fired Katyusha rockets at northern Israel in response to an overnight Israeli strike that, according to state media, hit a weapons depot and wounded six people.

Hizbollah has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces in support of Hamas since the Palestinian fighter group's October 7 surprise attack on southern Israel triggered war in the Gaza Strip.

The Iran-backed Hizbollah said it targeted northern Israel's Dafna area with Katyusha rockets "in response to the Israeli enemy's attacks that targeted civilians in the town of Adloun, injuring several of them".

This comes after the Israeli military said its air force "struck two Hizbollah weapons storage facilities in southern Lebanon, containing rockets and additional weaponry".

Late on Saturday, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency (NAA) said "the Israeli enemy launched a raid" on the town of Adloun, about 30 kilometres from the border with Israel, later saying the target was "an ammunition depot".

"Six civilians sustained moderate injuries," the NNA said on Sunday, revising the figure up from three the night before.

Rockets were still exploding about an hour after the strike was first reported, the NNA said, with videos circulating online showing several large explosions in Adloun.

"Shrapnel from the explosions flew to surrounding villages," the NNA said.

Hizbollah on Sunday said in separate statements that three of its fighters were killed.

Earlier on Saturday, Hizbollah and its Palestinian ally Hamas had fired rocket salvos and explosive-laden drones at Israeli positions.

Hizbollah said it had launched "dozens of Katyusha rockets" towards northern Israel "in response" to a strike blamed on Israel that injured civilians.

Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, said they also fired a rocket salvo from south Lebanon towards an Israeli military position in the Upper Galilee.

The violence since October has killed at least 518 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally. Most of the dead have been fighters, but they have included at least 104 civilians.

On the Israeli side, 18 soldiers and 13 civilians have been killed, according

HODEIDA, Yemen — Israeli warplanes struck the Houthi-controlled Yemeni port of Hodeida on Saturday, a day after a Houthi drone attack killed a civilian in Tel Aviv, the rebels said.

In a statement on social media, top Houthi official Mohammed Abdulsalam reported a "brutal Israel aggression against Yemen".

He said the attack targeted "fuel storage facilities and a power plant" in Hodeida "to pressure Yemen to stop supporting" Palestinians in the Gaza war.

The Axios news outlet cited US and Israeli officials as saying that Israel carried out the strikes in retaliation for a Houthi drone strike on Tel Aviv.

The Houthi attack on Friday penetrated Israel's vaunted air defences and killed a civilian in a Tel Aviv apartment building, drawing Israeli threats of retaliation.

The Houthi-run health ministry said there were deaths and injuries in the Hodeida strikes but it did not give a toll.

In a statement carried by the Houthi-run Al Masirah television, it said several people suffered "serious burns".

Footage aired by Al Masirah, which AFP could not independently verify, showed a massive blaze on the seafront, with a large plume of black smoke rising into the sky.

An AFP correspondent in Hodeida reported hearing several large explosions and seeing smoke over the port.

Fuel pumps across the city closed following the attack, the correspondent said.

Hodeida has been hard hit by a series of strikes carried out by Britain and the United States since January in response to attacks by Houthi rebels on commercial shipping in the Red Sea

The Houthis have attacked at least 88 commercial vessels since November in a campaign they say targets Israeli-linked shipping in support of the Palestinians in the Gaza war.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Hizbollah and its Palestinian ally Hamas said they launched rocket barrages at Israeli positions on Saturday to avenge a strike that injured civilians in south Lebanon and the Gaza war toll.

Hizbollah has traded near-daily fire with Israeli forces in support of Hamas since the Palestinian fighter group's October 7 surprise attack on southern Israel triggered war in the Gaza Strip.

Earlier on Saturday, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency said Syrian nationals, including children, had been injured after an "enemy drone targeted an empty four-wheel drive" near their tent, less than four kilometres from the border.

Doctor Mouenes Kalakesh who heads the Marjayoun government hospital said a woman and her three children, two of them minors, had been admitted for shrapnel injuries after the strike outside Burj Al Muluk.

Among them was an 11-year-old boy in critical condition after he sustained shrapnel injuries and a head wound, Kalakesh told AFP.

Hizbollah said it launched "dozens of Katyusha rockets" on Dafna, an area in Israel's north that the group said it was targeting for the first time, "in response to the attack on civilians".

On Wednesday, Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had warned his Iran-backed group would hit new targets in Israel if more civilians were killed in Israeli strikes.

Later Saturday, Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, said they fired a rocket salvo from south Lebanon towards an Israeli military position in the Upper Galilee "in response to the Zionist massacres against civilians in the Gaza Strip".

The Israeli forces said a total of 45 "projectiles" had been fired from Lebanon Saturday afternoon, towards the occupied Golan Heights and the Galilee, reporting no casualties.

The army said it struck "the launcher... in southern Lebanon from which the projectiles were launched toward the Golan Heights", also targeting "an additional Hizbollah launcher".

On Thursday, Israeli strikes killed at least five people, including the commander of a Hamas-allied group in Lebanon, militant groups and a security source said.

On Tuesday, Lebanese official media said separate Israeli strikes in south Lebanon killed five Syrians, three of them children, with Hizbollah announcing rocket fire at Israel in retaliation.

The violence since October has killed at least 515 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally.

Most of the dead have been fighters, but they have included at least 104 civilians.

On the Israeli side, 18 soldiers and 13 civilians have been killed, according to Israeli authorities.