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ADEN (Reuters) – Yemen’s warring parties started fresh U.N.-sponsored talks in Jordan on Monday, Yemeni officials said, two days after Houthi forces began withdrawing from the ports of Hodeidah, breaking a six month stalemate.
The talks will focus on sharing out revenues from Hodeidah’s three Red Sea ports to help relieve an urgent humanitarian crisis, they said.
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Source: reuters.com
Saeed al-Abyad
The Iran-backed Houthi militias have been trying to lure army forces deployed to the outskirts of the coastal city of Hodeidah into armed confrontation.
Analysts said the militias are plotting to break the UN-brokered Stockholm agreement, which was signed last December.
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Source: aawsat.com
BY DR. IAN RALBY, DR. DAVID SOUD, AND ROHINI RALBY
A floating storage and offloading (FSO) terminal less than five miles off the coast of Yemen has turned into a massive bomb—capable of explosion due to its contents and lack of maintenance. The risk of explosion increases by the day, and if that were to happen, not only would it damage or sink any ships in the vicinity, but it would create an environmental crisis roughly four and a half times the size of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
The consequences of that explosion and corresponding environmental devastation would likely be 1) to rupture the fragile aid-focused ceasefire in Hodeidah established under the December 2018 Stockholm Agreement; and 2) to accelerate the already dire humanitarian crisis in Yemen where roughly fourteen million people are on the brink of famine, surviving at the moment on international aid. There is nothing benign about this situation—even in a region with countless immediate needs, this matter is of the utmost urgency.
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Source: atlanticcouncil.org
Somaliland wants to be included in the Taskforce on the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).
The Somaliland government says that any initiative to coordinate a response to changing Red Sea environs that does not include them in a meaningful way will lack the credibility, capability and representativeness necessary to contend with competing multinational cooperation efforts in these waters.
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Source: menafn.com
By FRED OLUOCH
Countries in the Horn of Africa have formed a task force to co-ordinate regional interventions in the face of threats to marine resources and security around the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
The team was formed on Thursday in Nairobi by the Committee of Ambassadors from the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad) partner states of Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Djibouti, Somalia and South Sudan.
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Source: theeastafrican.co.ke
Lucy Fisher, Defence Correspondent
Senior defence sources today dismissed reports that five British special forces commandos were wounded in gun battles while on secret missions in Yemen.
Members of the Special Boat Service (SBS) were shot while fighting in the Saadah area in the north of the country, according to the Mail on Sunday.
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Source: thetimes.co.uk
ADEN, Yemen, March 20 (Xinhua) — Yemen’s government accused on Wednesday the Houthi rebels of pushing for a new escalation of armed confrontations in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah despite the cease-fire brokered by the United Nations.
The government’s spokesman, Rajeh Badi, announced during a press conference held in the southern port city of Aden that the Houthi rebels are continuing to dispatch military reinforcements into Hodeidah in an attempt to “spark the situation militarily again.”
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Source: xinhuanet.com
The Iranian Navy has dispatched its 61st flotilla to Bab-el-Mandab Strait to safeguard maritime routes used by Iranian vessels, Commander of the Iranian Navy’s Southern Fleet Rear Admiral Afshin Tashk said on Sunday.
The navy chief added that the fleet, which consists of Sabalan destroyer and a logistic warship named Bandar Abbas, set off on Saturday for the international waters to safeguard maritime routes used by Iranian vessels, especially in the strategic strait of Bab-el-Mandab, which links the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea.
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Source: en.mehrnews.com
LONDON (Reuters) – Iran will respond firmly to any Israeli naval action against its oil shipments, Iran’s defense minister said on Wednesday, in comments that came a week after Israel’s prime minister said its navy could act against Iranian oil “smuggling” to enforce U.S. sanctions.
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Source: reuters.com
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