Jemen

After more than seven years of war, Yemen is living in a chronic state of emergency, marked by hunger, disease and other miseries that are rising faster than aid agencies can reverse, UN relief chief Martin Griffiths told the Security Council on Tuesday, as the Special Envoy for the country called for joint efforts by Yemenis and the international community to break the entrenched cycle of violence.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati has said that he will not seek re-election in a parliamentary election scheduled for May 15. The statement, made in a television address on Monday, throws Sunni Muslim politics in Lebanon into deeper disarray, two months from a vote seen as important for reinvigorating public life in Lebanon in the third year of a financial crisis.

The U.N. Security Council voted Monday to impose an expanded arms embargo on Yemen's Houthi rebels, saying they have threatened the peace, security and stability of the war-torn country.

The United States on Wednesday announced sanctions against what it said were members of an international financing network for Yemen's Houthi rebels after the Iran-backed group recently escalated cross-border drone and missile attacks on its oil-rich Gulf neighbors .

Recent attacks on the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia indicate how the conflict in Yemen risks spiralling out of control, the chief UN mediator for the country told the Security Council on Tuesday, as he called for “serious efforts” to be made by Yemeni parties, the region and the international community, to end the fighting, now in its seventh year.

[…] The five were kidnapped in the southern governorate of Abyan on Friday while returning to the port city of Aden "after having completed a field mission," U.N. spokesperson Eri Kaneko told AFP.

Civilian deaths and injuries in Yemen's civil war have almost doubled since UN human rights monitors were controversially removed in October, a non-governmental organisation said on Thursday. The ejection of monitors had opened the door to "unchecked, horrific violations", the Norwegian Refugee Council said, urging their reinstatement.

How strong are the Houthis? And how have seven years of war affected Yemen? Key questions answered, in seven graphics.

Airstrikes last week by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen that hit a detention facility in the northern city of Sa’ada, killed some 91 people and injured dozens more, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Friday, citing preliminary figures. 

Yemen rebels fired missiles at the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, with coalition forces hitting back by blowing up the insurgents’ launchpad as a sharp escalation of hostilities entered a second week on Monday.