Yemen

The United Nations has received $33 million in new pledges on Wednesday towards a $144 million operation to avoid an oil spill from a tanker stranded off the coast of Yemen which threatens a major environmental disaster. 

A two-month truce and reconfiguration of executive powers in Yemen’s internationally recognised government represent an opportunity, if not for peace, then at least for negotiations aimed at achieving it. But getting to talks will require overcoming a barrier many see as insurmountable: dialogue with the Huthi rebels.

Saudi officials say the move is aimed at solidifying a two-month truce that went into effect in early April.

At the start of a two-month nationwide truce, the Houthis signed an Action Plan with the UN to end and prevent the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict; the killing and maiming of children; and attacks on schools and hospitals.

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.