A Chinese envoy on Monday urged Yemen's Houthi group to respect the right of commercial vessels of all countries to navigate in the waters of the Red Sea and to immediately stop the harassment. Speaking at a UN Security Council meeting on Yemen, Geng Shuang, China's deputy permanent representative to the UN, stressed the necessity of pushing for the situation in the Red Sea to cool down as soon as possible to solve the Yemeni issue. Shuang said, "We call on the Houthis to respect the right of navigation for commercial vessels of all countries in the Red Sea in accordance with international law and to cease immediately relevant attacks." Houthis have been launching attacks on commercial shipping vessels traveling through the Red Sea since mid-November.
The Masam Project, dedicated to clearing mines in Yemen, dismantled 935 mines in various regions during the first week of May 2024. These included seven anti-personnel mines, 47 anti-tank mines, 876 unexploded ordnances, and five explosive devices. Since the start of the project, a total of 440,067 mines have been cleared. The parties to the conflict in Yemen planted thousands of landmines since the war started in 2015.
The United States warned on Monday that progress towards the resolution of the Yemen conflict would require Iran to stop supplying the Houthis with an "unprecedented" amount of weaponry that is destabilizing the region. US deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the UN Security Council that if the international community wants to make progress towards ending the civil war in Yemen, it must act collectively to "call Iran out for its destabilizing role and insist that it cannot hide behind the Houthis."He indicated that the supplies are allowing the Houthis to carry out "reckless attacks" on ships in the Red Sea and elsewhere.
Israeli troops are back fighting in the north of the Gaza Strip, in areas that were supposed to have been cleared months ago, highlighting growing questions about the government's declared goal of eliminating Hamas. As tanks have started pushing into the southern city of Rafah, where the military says the last four intact battalions of Hamas are dug in, there has been fierce fighting in the Zeitoun area of Gaza City and around Jabalia, to the north, both of which the army took control of last year before moving on. "If we rely on a strategy of ongoing attrition or surgical operations against Hamas, it won't achieve the goal of governmental or military collapse," said Michael Milshtein, a former military intelligence officer and one of Israel's most prominent experts on the Islamist movement.
