Yemen

US Fifth Fleet Commander Vice Admiral says the task force will operate in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandab and Gulf of Aden and will also target human trafficking and the smuggling of drugs and other illicit goods.

Yemeni President Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi has given up his powers and tasked a presidential council to lead the country, including conducting negotiations to bring an end to the conflict with Houthi rebels.

A two-month truce in Yemen which goes into effect on Saturday must be a first step in ending the county’s devastating war, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on the eve of the ceasefire. 

Yemen rebels launch barrage of strikes on Saudi sites

Yemen's Houthi rebels unleashed one of their most intense barrages of drone and missile strikes on Saudi Arabia's critical energy facilities on Sunday, sparking a fire at one site and temporarily cutting oil production at another. The salvo marked a serious escalation of rebel attacks on the kingdom as the war in Yemen rages into its eighth year and peace talks stall.

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.