The Houthis of Yemen have claimed responsibility for the downing of a US MQ-9 Reaper drone over al-Bayda province in Yemen. It is the fifth U.S. drone downed in Yemen since late last year. Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree said Tuesday the latest drone was shot down with a locally made surface-to-air missile. He did not say when it occurred but said the drone "was carrying out hostile missions" over Yemen's southern province of Bayda. According to the Associated Press, the U.S. military's Central Command acknowledged reports about the downing but declined to comment. Reapers cost around $30 million apiece. They can fly at altitudes up to 50,000 feet and have an endurance of up to 24 hours before needing to land.
The Secretary General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi, stressed that the GCC countries support all international efforts that contribute to achieving security, stability, development and peace in Yemen. This came during his meeting with the Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General to Yemen, Hans Grundberg, at the Secretariat General's headquarters in Riyadh. The discussions focused on supporting the Yemeni government and ending the Yemeni crisis by reaching a political solution under the Gulf Initiative and its executive mechanism, the comprehensive National Dialogue Conference (NDC) outcomes, and Security Council Resolution 2216.
The Masam Project, dedicated to clearing mines in Yemen, dismantled 2,010 explosives in various governorates during the second week of May 2024. These included 11 anti-personnel mines, 19 anti-tank mines, and 1,980 unexploded ordnances. Since the start of the project, a total of 442,077 explosives have been cleared. The parties to the conflict in Yemen have planted thousands of mines in Yemen since the war broke out in 2015.
Forging formal Israeli-Saudi relations as part of an emerging trilateral deal involving Washington would require a calming of the Gaza war and a discussion of prospects for Palestinian governance, the U.S. envoy to Jerusalem said on Tuesday. "There's going to have to be some period of quiet, I think, in Gaza, and there's going to have to be a conversation about how do you deal with the question of the future of Palestinian governance," Ambassador Jack Lew said. On Monday, the United States described a "near-final" bilateral defence pact with Saudi Arabia. Once completed, it would be part of a broad deal presented to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to decide whether to make concessions to secure a normalization of ties with Riyadh.
