US military carries out more strikes against Houthis in Yemen
American forces have carried out strikes in Yemen against 10 attack drones and a ground control station belonging to the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, according to the US military.
Early on Thursday local time, US forces targeted a “Houthi UAV ground control station and 10 Houthi one-way UAVs” that “presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and the US Navy ships in the region,” Centcom said, using an abbreviation for unmanned aerial vehicle.
Centcom earlier announced that the USS Carney had shot down an anti-ship ballistic missile fired by the Houthis, and then downed three Iranian drones less than an hour later.
It did not specify if the drones shot down by the naval destroyer were designed for attack or surveillance.
American forces also destroyed a Houthi surface-to-air missile on Wednesday that Centcom said posed an imminent threat to “US aircraft”. Agence France-Presse reports the language is a deviation from past air raids that focused on reducing the rebels’ ability to threaten international shipping.
It did not identify the type of aircraft that were threatened or the exact location of the strike, only saying that it took place in “Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.”
The Houthis began targeting Red Sea shipping in November, saying they were hitting Israeli-linked vessels in support of Palestinians in Gaza, which has been ravaged by the war.
US and UK forces have responded with strikes on the Houthis, who have since declared American and British interests to be legitimate targets as well.
Key events
Biden says he is ‘engaged day and night’ working towards ‘enduring peace with two states for two peoples’
Lauren Gambino
US president Joe Biden has been speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast on Capitol Hill in Washington DC.
Biden started his remarks by honouring three US service members killed at a US base in Jordan in what the Biden administration has said was a drone attack from an Iran-backed militia.
Biden said he spoke with each of their families and would receive the dignified transfer of their bodies at Dover air force base on Friday.
“They risked it all,” Biden said. He also praised the “sacrifice and service to our country” of the dozens of servicemen and women who were injured in the attack.
Biden offered prayers for the lives lost in Israel and Gaza and said his administration was working “day and night” to secure peace in the region.
The president reasserted Washington’s assessment that the key to lasting peace in the Middle East was a two-state solution.
We value and pray for the lives taken and for the families left behind and all those who are living in dire circumstances: the innocent men, women and children held hostage, or under bombardment or displaced not knowing where the next meal will come from, or if it will come at all.
Not only do we pray for peace, we’re actively working for peace, security, dignity for the Israeli people and the Palestinian people. I’m engaged in this day and night, working as many of you in this room are to find the means to bring our hostages home, to ease humanitarian crisis and to bring peace to Gaza and Israel and enduring peace with two states for two peoples.
I also see the trauma, the death and destruction in Israel and Gaza, and understand the pain and passion felt by so many here in America and around the world.
The Yemen Houthi leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, has said today that US attempts to involve China with mediating the issue of Red Sea attacks showed that the US and UK had failed in their mission, Reuters reports.
The Houthis have been targeting what they consider to be Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea in what they say is a show of support for Palestinians in Gaza.
The US and UK have both launched strikes against Houthi targets, but the attacks have continued. Earlier this week the Houthis said they were prepared for a long battle.
The EU is also planning to send a naval mission to the region to deter attacks on commercial shipping. Italy’s defence minister said on Thursday the disruption to shipping via the Suez canal route had the potential to disrupt Italy’s economy.
Israel’s military reports that there were no Israeli injuries after “a number of launches from Lebanon” which have taken place “throughout the day”.
In a statement on its official Telegram channel, the IDF said it had “struck the sources of the fire” and also “struck a Hezbollah military site in Tayr Harfa in southern Lebanon”.
Norway’s foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, told Reuters on Thursday he was “reasonably optimistic” some countries that had paused funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, would resume payments.
The US, UK, Germany, France and Australia are among nations who stopped funding the agency after Israel accused 12 of its employees of being involved in the 7 October attack by Hamas inside southern Israel.
Reuters notes that UNRWA has said its entire operations in the Middle East, not just in Gaza, will most likely be forced to shut down by the end of February if its funding remains suspended.
Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the newswires from Gaza and Israel.
Al Jazeera reports that the health ministry in Gaza has said that “more than 30,000 displaced people in schools near Nasser hospital in Khan Younis have no water, food or baby formula”.
Reuters reports a Palestinian source has told the news agency that they do not expect Hamas to reject the ceasefire proposals, but it is unlikely to agree to them in their present form.
On condition of anonymity, the Palestinian official told Reuters:
I expect that Hamas will not reject the paper, but it might not give a decisive agreement either. Instead, I expect them to send a positive response, and reaffirm their demands: for the agreement to be signed, it must ensure Israel will commit to ending the war in Gaza and pull out from the enclave completely.
The proposal is understood to be that Hamas would release women, children and those over 60 who have been held hostage, in return for a pause in the fighting. But, crucially, it seems unlikely that Israel is willing to offer to pull its troops out of the Gaza Strip.
There are political as well as military implications for Israel. The hardline interior security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has threatened that he would pull out of the war cabinet and government of national unity if the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, agreed to a “reckless deal”.
Hamas officials are reported to currently be studying the proposals in Cairo.
Yemeni minister urges EU to step up pressure on Houthis
Yemen’s foreign minister urged the European Union on Thursday to increase pressure on the Iran-aligned Houthis who are attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea, a vital global trade artery.
Reuters reports:
Houthi militants, who control the most populous parts of Yemen, say their actions are a demonstration of solidarity with the Palestinians amid Israel’s war against Hamas militants in Gaza but the attacks have disrupted shipping, prompting US and British strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.
The 27-nation EU aims to launch its own Red Sea naval mission by mid-February to help protect ships there.
Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak, the foreign minister in Yemen’s Aden-based government that is backed by Saudi Arabia, told reporters ahead of talks with EU officials:
Just striking the Houthis won’t do enough. We need mid and long term solutions.
The EU has the wrong approach. They need to exercise more pressure on the Houthis such as by designating them as a terrorist group. Their argument is that if they adopt this then it will worsen the humanitarian situation.
But this approach didn’t work. The Houthis are still blackmailing the international community and the humanitarian situation has not improved.
Houthis will never stop … They have the ideology that as a group they have a divine right [to rule] in Yemen.
Mubarak added that they were also part of Iran’s regional strategy. He called for more EU support for building Yemeni institutions such as the coastguard and for humanitarian aid to be channelled through the central bank in Aden.
He said the west’s lack of a “clear path” to ending the conflict in Gaza and securing justice for the Palestinians was strengthening “all the extremists groups in our region”.
Geneva Abdul
An Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing doctors working for UK charities in January, a month after the Israeli military told British counterparts the site was marked protected, MPs were told earlier this week.
Conservative MP and foreign affairs committee chair Alicia Kearns said the compound in al-Mawasi, “a supposed safe zone in Gaza”, housing the UK charity Medical Aid for Palestinians and the International Rescue Committee, was bombed by an F-16 airstrike in January.
Raising the incident during a parliamentary debate on Monday, days after the UN’s international court of justice ordered Israel to ensure its forces do not commit acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, Kearns said:
Thankfully, the four British doctors living there were only injured, although that itself is a cause for concern.
A month before that, on 22 December, it was confirmed via UK defence channels that the IDF had logged the coordinates of the humanitarian base and de-conflicted it, marking it as a protected sensitive and humanitarian site. I am gravely concerned that the airstrike still took place.
Around 6am on 18 January, the missile strike severely damaged the compound, injuring a number of team members and the compound’s security guard, according to MAP, who said following their evacuation they were unable to continue their work at Nasser hospital, the largest remaining health facility in Gaza. Last week, Médecins Sans Frontières warned the hospital in Khan Younis was no longer able to provide vital medical services.
MAP said in a statement:
The IRC and MAP are working with the UN to determine what has happened and to ensure the continued safety of our teams and viability of their vital humanitarian work.
Foreign minister and Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell acknowledged the strike and said it had been raised by the foreign secretary, David Cameron, in Israel last week, and by the UK ambassador, Simon Walters, in Tel Aviv.
Mitchell said:
We continually remind the Israeli government of their duties under international humanitarian law. The bombing of the compound is an extremely serious matter.
The incident comes as the UK Department for Business and Trade is being challenged by the Global Legal Action Network (Glan) in a judicial review over its decision not to revoke arms export licences to Israel. Last month, court documents revealed UK Foreign Office legal advisers were unable to conclude that Israel was in compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL) in its bombardment of Gaza.
According to the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), the UK provides components to US-built equipment destined for Israel, including head-up displays for F-16s.
Siobhan Allen, a senior lawyer at Glan, said:
The papers released through our legal case show that, even as the UK government continued to allow arms licences for weapons to assist Israel in its assault on Gaza, its own Foreign Office harboured ‘serious concerns’ about Israel’s compliance with IHL.
Those concerns can now only be more acute in the face of an incident of such obvious concern as this, where UK weapons appear to have been used in a direct attack on a site Israel knew to be a de-conflicted, protected, humanitarian site.
The Israeli military has been approached for comment.
Melanie Ward, CEO of Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) said:
We strongly condemn the near fatal airstrike by the Israeli military on a residential compound housing our MAP-IRC Emergency Medical Team and members of MAP’s Gaza team and their family members, which is one of many Israeli military attacks on health and related facilities. This is happening multiple times every single day to Palestinian civilians in Gaza. We need to know the facts as to why this airstrike took place and receive assurances of non-recurrence, and we look to the UK Government to support us with this. We further demand that our colleagues in Gaza, their families, and all civilians and humanitarian workers be protected from further attack.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, in a phone call with his Saudi counterpart on Thursday, condemned an attack on a US military outpost on neighboring Jordanian territory near the border with Syria, state media reported.
The two ministers agreed on continuing contact between the two countries in order to assure avoidance of danger of war spreading in the region.
Summary of the day so far …
It is 2pm in Gaza City, Tel Aviv and Cairo, 3pm in Sana’a and 3.30pm in Tehran. Here are the headlines …
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American forces have carried out strikes in Yemen against 10 attack drones and a ground control station belonging to the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, according to the US military. Early on Thursday local time, US forces targeted a “Houthi UAV ground control station and 10 Houthi one-way UAVs” that “presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and the US Navy ships in the region,” Centcom said.
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The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) issued a warning about a later incident in the Red Sea near Yemen when a vessel reported an explosion “a distance off” its starboard side. Italy’s defence minister has said that disruption to Red Sea shipping caused by attacks by Yemen’s Houthis risks destabilising the Italian economy.
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At least 27,019 Palestinians have been killed and 66,139 injured in the Israeli assault on Gaza since 7 October, the health ministry in Gaza has said. In its statement, the ministry said in the past 24 hours, 118 Palestinians were killed and 190 injured. Images from the Gaza Strip today show that the Israeli bombardment continues.
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In its latest operational briefing, Israel’s military has claimed to have destroyed a long-range missile launcher and to be continuing to operate in northern and central Gaza, killing dozens of what it described as “terrorists”. Israeli media reports that Hamas representatives are again conducting talks in Cairo on the outlines of a possible hostage deal, with Egypt and Qatar mediating.
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Israeli protesters have this morning been attempting to prevent trucks departing from Ashdod port if the protesters believe they are carrying humanitarian aid destined for the Gaza Strip. It is an extension of demonstrations that were being held at the Kerem Shalom border crossing by Israeli campaign groups who want to see all aid blocked to Gaza until Hamas has released the remaining estimated 136 hostages held there. Haaretz correspondent Eden Solomon reported that several protesters attacked Arab truck drivers, cursing and saying “I’m the master, you’re the slave.”
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Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that at least 41 Palestinians were detained by Israeli forces inside the Israeli-occupied West Bank yesterday, bring the total number detained since 7 October to nearly 6,460.
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The bodies of nine labourers from Pakistan killed by gunmen in Iran last week were repatriated to their home country. It is still unclear who was behind the attack on Saturday in a home in Iran’s Sistan and Balochistan province. Iran and Pakistan exchanged airstrikes recently, with both countries claiming they were attacking Balochistan separatist militants operating freely over their border.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) has issued a warning of a reported incident in the Red Sea near Yemen.
Reuters has a quick snap that the vessel and crew are safe, but reported an explosion “a distance off” its starboard side.
Number of Palestinians killed during Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October rises to over 27,000 – ministry
At least 27,019 Palestinians have been killed and 66,139 injured in the Israeli assault on Gaza since 7 October, the health ministry in Gaza has said.
Reuters reports that in its statement, the ministry said in the past 24 hours, 118 Palestinians were killed and 190 injured. Images from the Gaza Strip today show that the Israeli bombardment continues.
The Hamas-run ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its figures, though it claims the majority of those killed by Israel have been women and children. It does not distinguish between those killed directly by Israeli military action, and those who may have died as a result of the ensuing humanitarian and healthcare crisis in the beseiged territory.
On Friday 26 January, the international court of justice in The Hague told Israel it must “take all measures within its power” to desist from killing Palestinians in contravention of the genocide convention, and to “ensure with immediate effect” that its military forces do not engage in such acts as killing Palestinians in Gaza, “causing serious bodily or mental harm” to Palestinians in Gaza, “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”, or “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”.
Over the same period of time, Israel has stated that it has lost more than 220 troops during the ground offensive, and has previously estimated to have killed about 9,000 Hamas fighters during its campaign.
Since 7 October, an additional 370 Palestinian deaths caused by Israeli forces or settlers have been recorded in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including the deaths of 94 children.
The Israeli campaign began after the surprise Hamas attack inside southern Israel on 7 October which killed about 1,140 people, and during which an estimated 240 people were seized and abducted into Gaza as hostages. Of those, it is estimated that 136 are still being held in captivity, with not all of them still believed to be alive.
It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify casualty figures being issued.
Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that at least 41 Palestinians were detained by Israeli forces inside the Israeli-occupied West Bank yesterday. Citing advocacy group the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club (PPC), it reports that 28 of those were detained in Bethlehem.
Wafa reports “the total number of Palestinians detained since the start of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip on 7 October has risen to nearly 6,460.”
Israeli protesters inspect trucks at Ashdod port in attempt to prevent humanitarian aid entering Gaza
Israeli protesters have this morning been attempting to prevent trucks departing from Ashdod port if the protesters believe they are carrying humanitarian aid destined for the Gaza Strip.
It is an extension of demonstrations that were being held at the Kerem Shalom border crossing by Israeli campaign groups who want to see all aid blocked to Gaza until Hamas has released the remaining estimated 136 hostages held there.
Israel’s security forces have, over the course of this week, declared the Kerem Shalom and the Nitzana border crossings as closed military zones to prevent further demonstrations there.
Now in the Ashdod port: the police are saying aid to Gaza doesn’t go out from here, the right wing protesters are checking the cargo manifest of every truck pic.twitter.com/GI4ikbYsYf
— Oren Ziv (@OrenZiv_) February 1, 2024
Haaretz reports that Knesset member Zvi Sukkot has joined the protest, and correspondent Eden Solomon wrote:
Activists protesting the transfer of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip blocked a major intersection on the road to the Ashdod seaport on Thursday morning.
The police blocked the entry of vehicles to the port to prevent the protesters from blocking the passage of aid shipments through the border crossings.
Several protesters attacked Arab truck drivers, cursing and saying” “I’m the master, you’re the slave.”
Italy’s defence minister has said that disruption to Red Sea shipping caused by attacks by Yemen’s Houthis risks destabilising the Italian economy.
Citing a huge fall in traffic heading to Italy via the Suez Canal, Reuters reports Guido Crosetto said:
From a geopolitical perspective, the continuing of this situation could lead to the marginalisation of ports on the Mediterranean Sea. Not only does it threaten the security of navigation but also (Italy’s) economic stability.
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