Forces from an alliance of Arab states seized two entrances to the airport in Yemen’s main port city on Friday, in an offensive against the Iran-aligned Houthi movement that the United Nations fears could trigger a famine

imperiling millions of lives.

The swift advance was an important early success for the Saudi- and United Arab Emirates-led alliance, which launched the operation in Hodeida three days ago and says it can seize the city quickly enough to avoid interrupting aid to the millions facing starvation.

“We saw the resistance forces in the square at the northwestern entrance to the airport,” said a Hodeida resident, referring to Yemeni allies of the Saudi-led coalition. Two Yemeni military officials allied with the coalition confirmed

this.

Alliance-backed Yemeni forces tweeted that they had also seized the airport’s southern entrance and were advancing down a main road toward the Hodeida seaport.

The UAE state news agency said Houthi fighters at the airport were crumbling. However, local military sources said the Houthis had surrounded themselves with a large number of land mines, meaning that it would take some time for coalition forces to battle their way to the main airport buildings.

Residents said battles had been fought in the Manzar neighborhood abutting the wall around the airport. “There have been terrifying bombing runs since the morning, when they struck Houthi positions near the airport,” said fish vendor Ammar Ahmed. “We live days of terror that we have never known before.”

In the evening, a first ambulance made it into the area and evacuated seven wounded civilians, but two of them died before reaching a hospital, a medical source told Reuters.

Apache attack helicopters hovered over Manzar, firing at Houthi snipers and fighters in schools and other buildings, said another resident, who asked not to be identified. Houthi forces had entered homes overlooking the main road to go onto the roofs.

Streets elsewhere in the city were empty despite the Eid holiday marking the end of the Ramadan fast. Houthi fighters amassed in the city center where a hospital put out a call for blood donations, the resident said.

Aid agency CARE International quoted its last staff member in Hodeida as saying: “The situation is very scary, scarier than it has ever been before. We can hear the fighting coming close and the situation is really changing for the worse.”

Big gamble

The coalition of Arab states has battled with little success for three years to defeat the Houthis, who control the capital, Sanaa, the Hodeida port and most of Yemen’s populated areas.

The assault on Hodeida is the alliance’s first attempt to capture such a well-defended major city.

“We are at the edges of the airport and are working to secure it now,” the Arab coalition said in a statement to Reuters. “Operational priority is to avoid civilian casualties, maintain the flow of humanitarian aid, and allow for the U.N. to press the Houthis to evacuate the city.”

The assault is a gamble by the Arab states, who insist they can swiftly capture the port without major disruption to aid supplies in a country already experiencing the world’s most pressing humanitarian crisis.

The United Nations, which struggled but failed to find a diplomatic path to head off the assault, fears the fighting will cut off the only lifeline for most Yemenis. Around 22 million depend on aid and 8.4 million are at immediate risk of starvation.

Western countries have long given the Arab states tacit diplomatic backing and sell them billions of dollars a year in arms. But that support could falter if the assault provokes the feared humanitarian catastrophe.

Capturing Hodeida would give the Arab coalition the upper hand in the war, in which it has fought to restore an exiled government driven out by the Houthis. But a successful operation would require capturing a city of 600,000 people without inflicting damage that would destroy the port.

Civilians are fleeing if they have anywhere to go, or staying and bracing for a battle.

“My family left for Sanaa yesterday but I stayed behind alone to protect our home from looters,” said Mohammed Abdullah, an employee of the Houthi administration.

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi say the Houthis are a proxy force for Iran, their regional archrival. The Houthis, from a Shiite minority, deny being Tehran’s pawns. Instead, they say they took power in a popular revolt and are defending Yemen from invasion by its neighbors.
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Muslims around the world are celebrating Eid al-Fitr, the holiday ends Ramadan, Islam’s holy month of fasting.

In Afghanistan, President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani on Friday touted a three-day cease-fire with the Taliban in an address to the nation to mark the Eid holiday. The cease-fire lasts through Sunday, but Ghani appealed for a lengthier cease-fire and called again for the Taliban come to the negotiating table.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad attended Friday Eid prayers at a mosque in Tartous, a town in the coastal region that has remained loyal to the leader throughout seven years of civil war. 

In Bangladesh, hundreds of thousands of people went to Dhaka’s ferry terminals and train stations in the hope of returning home for the Eid celebrations. Bangladesh is set to celebrate Eid either on Saturday or Sunday, depending on the sighting of the moon.

Eid begins on the first day of the month of Shawwal, the 10th month of the Islamic lunar calendar, but there are regional differences in the timing of Eid because of different interpretations of the calendar.

In Jakarta, thousands of people gathered in front of the Al Azhar mosque to conduct Eid prayers. Indonesia is the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, and this year the government announced more than a weeklong national holiday to mark the occasion.

In Baghdad, thousands of people flocked to shops and markets ahead of Eid. Muslims traditionally shop before Eid and spend the three-day holiday at family gatherings where gifts are exchanged.

In Gaza, top Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh joined about 2,000 worshippers Friday in one of the areas near the border fence with Israel. He pledged protests by the fence would continue and praised a recent U.N. General Assembly resolution that accused Israel of using excessive force against Palestinian protesters. 

More than 120 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army in near-weekly protests at the fence that began in March. Israeli accuses Hamas of using the protests as cover for militants to attack the border fence with Israel.
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Friday marks the third day of fighting in a Saudi-led campaign to retake the Yemeni key port city of Hodeida from Shiite rebels known as Houthis.

Human Rights Watch wants the U.N. Security Council to let all warring parties know they will face sanctions if they block civilian access to humanitarian aid.

“The coalition and Houthi forces, now fighting for Hodeida, have atrocious records abiding by the laws of war,” HRW’s Sarah Leah Whitson warned Friday.

The Norwegian Refugee Council’s Acting Country Director Christopher Mzembe said, “As air strikes intensify and front lines move closer to Hodeida city, so does the very real threat of harm to civilians in Hodeida.”

On Thursday, the Security Council called on the warring factions in Yemen to keep Hodeida open, as humanitarians tried to deliver critical assistance to about 600,000 civilians in the city.

 

Council members held the emergency closed-door session after the Saudi-led coalition began airstrikes on Hodeida early Wednesday, after what coalition partner the United Arab Emirates said was the expiration of a deadline for Iranian-backed Houthi rebels to surrender the critical Red Sea port.

 

“It is time for the Security Council to call for an immediate freeze of the military attack on Hodeida,” Swedish U.N. envoy Carl Skau said ahead of the meeting. “This is needed to give the [U.N.] Special Envoy and United Nations-led efforts a chance to avert disaster and find a sustainable political solution to the conflict.”

 

U.N. Yemen envoy Martin Griffiths had been shuttling around the region trying to prevent the offensive, which the U.N. warns could have catastrophic consequences on a country where 22 million people already require assistance and is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. He is due to brief the council on Monday.

 

The U.N. has evacuated dozens of staff from Hodeida, but work continues through local partners.

 

“Yesterday, even as the city was being shelled and bombarded, a U.N.-contracted vessel, which is docked at Hodeida port, off-loaded thousands of metric tons of food,” U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, Lise Grande, said in a statement.

 

Grande said two more vessels are waiting to do the same. Humanitarians have been preparing for a possible assault for weeks and have pre-positioned food, water, fuel and other emergency supplies.

Hodeida is a lifeline for the poverty-stricken country, which imports 90 percent of its food, fuel and medicines – 70 percent of which come through the city’s port. The Houthis have controlled Hodeida for the last two years.

 

Despite an international arms embargo against the rebels, the coalition accuses them of using the port to smuggle weapons into the country, a charge the Houthis deny.

 

“We believe the coalition operations can create the right dynamic under the Yemeni government leadership to advance the work of the U.N. Special envoy Martin Griffiths in support of his peace plan,” UAE U.N. Ambassador Lana Nusseibeh told reporters.

 

“We don’t think there is a military solution to the conflict in Yemen, but we think every time we push hard, the Houthis accept to engage,” Yemen’s new foreign minister, Khaled Hussein Alyemany, told reporters in New York.

 

The coalition has expressed concern that the Houthis may try to blow up the seaport if they are forced out of the area. Alyemany said he has expressed this concern to U.N. envoy Griffiths and asked him to push the Houthis to respect international humanitarian law, which prohibits the destruction of vital civilian infrastructure.

 

Alyemany said coalition forces are not targeting the port as part of their offensive. “We are not planning to destroy the infrastructure; we are not planning to cause a major humanitarian impact,” he said.

Saudi Arabia began bombing Houthi rebels in support of the Yemeni government in March 2015. Since then, the U.N. estimates more than 10,000 people have been killed, mostly due to airstrikes.
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The U.S. State Department says the U.S. “will take firm and appropriate measures” in response to any Syrian government violations in southwest Syria within the boundaries of the de-escalation zone.

The accord for the de-escalation pact was negotiated last year by the U.S., Jordan and Russia.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement late Thursday the de-escalation pact and the cease-fire arrangement were initiatives by U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin “to de-escalate the Syrian conflict, save lives, and create conditions for the displaced to safely and voluntarily return to their homes.”

“A military offensive by the Syrian regime into this cease-fire zone would defy these initiatives,” Nauert said.

Nauert said the U.S. “remains committed to maintaining the stability of the southwest de-escalation zone and to the cease-fire underpinning it.”

The de-escalation zone borders Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. It is one of the remaining parts of the country still outside the control of the government of Bashar al-Assad.

Nauert said the “cease-fire must continue to be enforced and respected” and urged Russia “as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council to use its diplomatic and military influence over the Syrian government to stop attacks and compel the government to cease further military offensives.”
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The major Libyan oil ports of Ras Lanuf and Es Sider were closed and evacuated Thursday after armed brigades opposed to the powerful eastern commander Khalifa Haftar stormed them, causing a production loss of 240,000 barrels per day (bpd).

At least one storage tank at the Ras Lanuf terminal was set alight following the early-morning attack, an engineer told Reuters. Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) declared force majeure on loadings from both terminals.

The clashes between forces loyal to Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) and rival armed groups continued throughout the day south of Ras Lanuf, where the LNA was targeting its opponents with airstrikes, local sources said.

Military sources said the LNA had withdrawn from both ports.

The LNA took control of Es Sider and Ras Lanuf along with other oil ports in Libya’s oil crescent in 2016, allowing them to reopen after a long blockade and significantly lifting Libya’s oil production.

More than half the storage tanks at both terminals were badly damaged in previous fighting and have yet to be repaired, though there have been regular loadings from Es Sider.

NOC said it had evacuated all staff from the two terminals “as a precautionary measure.”

The immediate production loss was around 240,000 bpd and the entry of a tanker due at Es Sider on Thursday was postponed, it said.

NOC Chairman Mustafa Sanalla said the output loss was expected to rise to 400,000 bpd if the shutdown continued, calling it a “national disaster” for oil-dependent Libya.

A military source said the three-pronged attack was launched by the Benghazi Defense Brigades (BDB), a group that has previously tried to take the oil crescent and advance on Benghazi, which has been fully controlled by Haftar since late last year.

The NOC blamed Ibrahim Jathran, who headed an armed group that blockaded oil crescent terminals for three years before being forced out by the LNA, and who appeared in a video posted on social media Thursday announcing the start of a campaign.

“We announce the preparation of our ground forces and supporting forces in the oil region, and our objective is to overturn the injustice for our people over the past two years,” he said, standing in a camouflage jacket in an unidentified desert area.

“The past two years have been catastrophic for people in the oil crescent because of the presence of the system of injustice, which is the other face of terrorism and extremism.”

Billions lost

The NOC said Jathran’s previous blockades cost Libya tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue. He is sought by judicial authorities in Tripoli for the blockades and attempts to export oil independently.

Repeated previous attempts by the LNA’s opponents to retake the oil crescent have failed, and it is unclear how much military and local, tribal support Jathran or BDB forces currently have.

However, the LNA, which is the dominant force in eastern Libya and rejects the internationally recognized government in the capital, Tripoli, stirred some resentment with arrests when it moved into the oil crescent in 2016, and has recently been stretched thin.

Since last month it has been waging a campaign to take control of Derna, the last city in the east to elude its control.

France, which hosted an international summit last month to determine a plan for elections in Libya, said it “condemned with the utmost firmness the offensive conducted today by extremist elements in the oil crescent.”

Thursday’s clashes were not affecting any oilfields, the military source said. The LNA had at least five men killed and about six wounded, he said.

A local resident said he had heard the sound of heavy clashes and airstrikes at dawn and had seen a large fire at the Ras Lanuf tank farm.

Crude exports from Ras Lanuf stood at 110,000 bpd in May, while exports from Es Sider were around 300,000 bpd, according to oil analytics company Vortexa. 

The Minerva Lisa oil tanker, which was due to arrive at Es Sider to load a crude cargo on Thursday, was advised to stay outside the port, a source familiar with the matter said. 

The tanker, chartered by trader Petraco, was seen turning away from the port on Thursday morning without loading, according to Reuters ship tracking.

A second tanker, the Seascout, is expected to arrive at the port on June 18.

Libya’s oil production recovered last year to just over 1 million bpd and has been mostly stable, though it remains vulnerable to shutdowns and blockades at oil facilities.

National output is still well under the more than 1.6 million bpd Libya was producing before a 2011 uprising led to political fragmentation and armed conflict.
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