As GCC member states pledge to send aid to embattled Lebanon following yesterday's shocking and historic blast, allegedly caused by government negligence in the borderline failed state, a massive explosion just rocked a busy market near Dubai, in the UAE.

The fire has spread rapidly through a market in the emirate of Ajman.

Social media users are speculating without any evidence about a possible connection between this fire and the explosion yesterday in Beirut - though "bad things come in twos and threes" isn't much of a theory to go on.

Initial reports suggested that the explosion may have been caused by an incident in the firework storage area. However, later, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Hassan Diab said that 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate, which is typically used as an agricultural fertilizer, had been stored for six years at a port warehouse without proper safety measures, “endangering the safety of citizens.”

This statement was backed by General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim, who said a “highly explosive material” had been confiscated years earlier and stored in the warehouse, just minutes’ walk from Beirut’s shopping and nightlife districts.

Via AlMasdarNews.com

A Hebrew-language channel stated on Wednesday night that the Israeli army expects an attack by Hezbollah during the Islamic Eid Al-Adha holiday.

The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation, Kann, reported that Israel fears a “second attack” by Hezbollah in the next 48 hours, that is, during the celebration of Eid al-Adha.

The news channel reported that, based on this expectation, the Israeli army has strengthened its forces in the north near the Lebanese and Syrian borders, deploying advanced missile systems, special rockets and intelligence-gathering capabilities, for fear of a reaction from Hezbollah, after one of its members was killed in an airstrike on July 20th in Damascus.

The Israel-based news channel quoted a “Lebanese diplomat in Beirut” – whom they did not name – as saying that Hezbollah does not want a comprehensive escalation with Israel, but that it is looking for a real retaliation.

Another defection from the camp of Saudi led coalition. This time a group of nearly 40 forces from the Republican Guards who were stationed in Yemen's western coastline declared their defection to the Houthi Ansarullah Movement in the capital Sana'a.

The commander of the group Major General Fawaz Aljaali said that real intention of the Saudi-led became clear to them only after serving under the command of what he described as the country's occupiers. This defection has come after major victories achieved by Ansarullah fighters and army forces in the vicinity of Marib city.

Experts say this defection is considered as the biggest one that has followed many defections by senior military officials from the camp of Saudi led coalition. Since the beginning of Saudi led war in Yemen in 2015, thousands of the coalition forces have left the ranks of it.

At least four children have lost their lives and two others sustained injuries when a cluster bomb dropped earlier by the Saudi-led military aircraft in a residential area of Yemen’s central province of Ma’rib went off.

Arabic-language al-Masirah television network, citing local sources, reported that the explosion took place in the village of al-Hazm, which lies in the Harib al-Qaramish district of the province, on Tuesday.

Back on June 11, Yemen's Ministry of Human Rights, in a statement released by the official SABA news agency, warned that cluster munitions pose a serious danger to the lives of civilians, especially women and children, if they come in close contact with them.

The statement added that the alliance has used thousands of cluster bombs on residential areas, causing the death and injury of many civilians. Unexploded submunitions risk the lives of locals in the targeted areas as well.

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei says the Americans' presence in the region is the cause of insecurity in West Asia, underlining the need for unity among Muslims in the face of the US and the Zionist regime of Israel.

"We consider the US presence in the West Asian region to be a detriment to the nations of this region and a cause for insecurity, destruction and backwardness of the countries," Ayatollah Khamenei said on Wednesday in his annual Hajj message.

"Today, as always and more than ever, the necessary interests of the Islamic Ummah lie in unity; such unity that creates a single force in the face of threats and hostilities, and yells at the devil incarnate, that is the aggressive and treacherous US, and its mad dog, the Zionist regime, and bravely stands up to their bullying," the Leader added.

Last Thursday, July 23, two American fighters carried out hostile maneuvers against an Iranian civil aircraft at an extremely short distance on the stretch between Beirut and Tehran, in Syrian airspace. Several people were injured. Much more than a mere “mistake”, the American attitude reveals a real military strategy.

“Americans should not blame others in vain,” Iranian general Esmail Gha’ani has declared, “this is a fire they have lit and today has engulfed them.” Gha’ani, a veteran military commander who heads the Quds Force, the branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) responsible for extraterritorial operations, was speaking about the massive fire that has overtaken a U.S. navy vessel in San Diego.

The provocative remarks come amid signs of a new level of covert warfare being waged against Iran. The country has been beset by its own mysterious infernos and explosions, including at parks, medical clinics, power plants, ports, factories, a missile production compound, and a nuclear facility. The latter has been attributed to Israel by a source speaking to the New York Times. The incidents also come as the Trump administration has greenlighted the CIA to target Iranian infrastructure with cyberweapons.

Submitted by South Front,

The Middle East is rapidly moving towards a new round of confrontation between the US-Israeli bloc and Iranian-led Shiite forces...

On July 26, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) deployed M109 Doher howitzers near the separation line with Lebanon. The deployment of howitzers became the latest in a series of broad measures employed by the IDF near Lebanon recently. Earlier, the 13th “Gideon” Infantry Battalion of the IDF’s elite 1st “Golani” Brigade reinforced troops near the border. The number Israeli Hermes 450 drone reconnaissance flights also significantly increased over southern Lebanon. Additional IDF units were also deployed in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. On top of this, the IDF announced that it will hold the Lebanese government responsible “for all actions emanating from Lebanon”.

China has started exporting the third generation of their Red Arrow-12 anti-tank systems, also known as the HJ-12.

According to the China Defense website, Algeria has become the first Arab country to obtain the upgraded Chinese anti-tank system.

Just a day after striking sensitive oil installations and military sites inside Saudi Arabia in a retaliatory operation, Yemeni armed forces say they will soon unveil a new type of domestic ballistic missile.

Brigadier Abdullah bin Amer, deputy director of the Department of Moral Guidance for Media Affairs, hailed Yemen's major military operation that targeted a number of sites deep within the Saudi territory, including King Khalid airbase in the city of Khamis Mushait, an oil facility in Jizan industrial zone as well as military sites at Abha, Jizan and Najran airports and a military camp in Ma’rib Province.

Unlike previous operations that involved launching only one ballistic missile, the recent strike was conducted using a combination of missiles and drones, al-Masirah TV channel quoted bin Amer as saying.

Oil company Saudi Aramco operates a 400,000 barrel-a-day refinery in the Red Sea city of Jizan, which lies around 60 km (40 miles) from the Yemen border.

Yemen's army backed by Ansarullah fighters launched a number of retaliatory operations deep inside Saudi territories in response to Saudi spike of airstrikes. The army spokesperson Yahia Sareah said that the recent operations have hit their targets in airports of Jizan, Asir and Khamis Mushait, including a gathering of senior military officers, among them Saudi military officials in Altadween military camp in Ma?rib.

These operations, the army spokesperson says, have been carried out in retaliation to the spike of Saudi airstrikes, including Sunday's Saudi airstrike on a house in Washeha area of Hajjah province that resulted in the killing of 10 members from one family, among them the mother and two of her infants.

Yemeni Houthi forces hit a large oil facility in the southern Saudi Arabian city of Jizan in drone and missile attacks overnight, a Houthi military spokesman said on Monday.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis said earlier it had intercepted and destroyed four missiles and six explosive drones fired by the Houthis over the border towards Saudi Arabia. But there was no Saudi confirmation of where they were intercepted or whether anything was hit.

Oil company Saudi Aramco operates a 400,000-barrel-per-day refinery in the Red Sea city of Jizan, which lies around 60 km (40 miles) from the Yemen border. Aramco declined to comment.

Fighting in southern Yemen continued over the weekend in Taiz, when the Saudi-backed Yemeni government accused the UAE-backed separatists of having designs on the strategically important city, leading to multiple clashes.

Government forces and the Southern Transitional Council (STC) have been fighting over several provinces in South Yemen in recent weeks, and Taiz has been seen as the key to this war from the start. Indeed, the stalemate there is a big part of why pro-Saudi forces have been stalled in the south.

The UAE backs the separatists, and the Saudis back the government, but mostly the Saudis have tried to get the two sides talking, something which so far hasn’t accomplished anything, with the government criticizing the very idea of power-sharing.

After the Saudis attacked Aden, Taiz was the first offensive, aiming to take a road leading to Sanaa. The fight over Taiz has been raging ever since, with no sign of anyone taking it over enough to push deeper north.

The spokesman for Yemeni army has censured the US as the conspirator of the Saudi-led military onslaught on his country, saying Washington arms the Riyadh regime and its regional allies, defines goals for them and is involved in a political cover-up for their acts of aggression.

“Over the past few days, Yemeni armed forces have discovered large quantities of US-built munitions at the positions of Saudi mercenaries [loyal to the ex-Yemeni government] while conducting clean-up operations in the provinces of Ma’rib and al-Bayda,” Brigadier General Yahya Saree said at a press conference broadcast live from the capital Sana’a on Tuesday afternoon.

“The weapons had the logo of the so-called United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on,” said the Yemeni military official, adding that USAID supports and funds organizations in Yemen to collect classified information under the guise of humanitarian activities.

The UK government has come under fire after announcing that it is to recommence arms sales to Saudi Arabia, despite acknowledging that the kingdom could be using them to commit war crimes in Yemen.
In a written statement published on Tuesday, International Trade Secretary Liz Truss confirmed that the UK will resume trading militarily with their key ally in the Gulf region. A landmark UK Court of Appeal ruling in June 2019 judged that arms sales to the kingdom were unlawful – prompting the government to suspend new arms sales while it conducted a review.

The United States abolished slavery 150 years ago, and has affirmative action for minorities. It is the country that elected a Black president, Barack Obama -- twice! Yet, a new movement is toppling one historic monument after another one, as if the US is still enslaving African-Americans. Activists in Washington DC even targeted an Emancipation Memorial, depicting President Abraham Lincoln, who paid with his life for freeing slaves.

Today slavery still exists in many parts of Africa and Middle East, but the self-flagellating Western public is obsessively focused only on the Western past of African slavery rather than on real, ongoing slavery, which is alive and well -- and ignored. For today's slaves, there are no demonstrations in the streets, no international political pressure, and virtually no articles in the media.

"We must not forget that Arab-Muslims have been champions in this field," Kamel Bencheikh, a Muslim poet, wrote in Le Matin d'Algerie.

Authored by Tom Luongo via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

There are few men in modern American history more venal than Former National Security Adviser John Bolton. Calling Bolton a relic of the Cold War in his outlook on foreign policy is a kindness.

Bolton is a dangerous and pathetic creature whose entire life is an example of how incomplete men with a talent for violence can rise in a late-stage cesspit of political corruption.

He is simply someone who has never been in a fight in his life who lusts for the power to kill, main and destroy anyone who dares challenge him. A pathology he’s had the dubious distinction of being able to act out in the real world on more than one occasion.

This will, hopefully, be the last article I write about his cretin because once his last fifteen minutes of fame are used up attacking President Trump in slavish interview after interview supporting his book, Bolton will be finished in Washington D.C.

The United States and its allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia, are leading an arms race in the Middle East region, not Iran, an American scholar has said.

Kevin Barrett, an author, journalist and radio host with a Ph.D. in Islamic and Arabic Studies, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Monday, after US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook said that lifting the arms embargo on Iran will trigger an arms race in the Middle East.

Speaking at a joint news conference with Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs Adel al-Jubeir in Riyadh on Monday, Hook said lifting the ban would "only embolden" Iran and destabilize the region.

"This is not an outcome that the UN Security Council can accept. The council's mandate is clear: to maintain international peace and security," Hook added.

The spokesman for the Yemeni Armed Forces says the country’s troops, supported by allied fighters from Popular Committees, have managed to wrest control over large swathes of land in the central provinces of al-Bayda and Ma’rib, following fierce clashes with Saudi-sponsored militiamen loyal to former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Speaking at a press conference in the Yemeni capital city of Sana’a on Monday afternoon, Brigadier General Yahya Saree highlighted that 400 square kilometers of land in the two provinces had been liberated during the operation.

He said Yemen’s Armed Forces managed to completely seize the control of Radman al-Awad and Qaniyah districts in Bayda province, and retake vast areas of al-Abdiyah district in Ma’rib.

The United Nations describes itself in its charter as an international moral authority created to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” But activists who are trying to end the U.S. war on Yemen say that, in a dark twist on this mission, the international body is withholding criticism from the U.S.-Saudi military coalition, and effusively praising its leaders, to avoid jeopardizing donations to humanitarian funds aimed at helping ease the suffering created by that war. As Jehan Hakim, the chair of the Yemeni Alliance Committee, puts it, “The same hand we’re asking to feed Yemen is the same hand that is helping bomb them.”

By Tony Cartalucci for Global Research.

Despite what appears to be a terminal decline of US influence over the Middle East, Washington has no intentions of gracefully abandoning its aspirations of regional hegemony.

Air strikes carried out against Syria by Washington’s Israeli proxies, a mysterious explosion near Tehran, and the current Iraqi Prime Minister’s decision to round up leaders of Iranian-backed militias who helped defeat the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (ISIS) unfolded in quick succession in an apparent coordinated campaign aimed at Iran and its allies.

New Iraqi Prime Minister’s Checkered Past

Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi took office in May 2020.

While he has warned about deepening relations with Iran he has concurrently stated the importance of US backing – despite the US having illegally invaded, destroyed, and since occupied Iraq starting in 2003.

A Saudi-brokered ceasefire between the Saudi-backed government in Yemen and the Southern Transitional Council (STC) has not lasted long, and after tensions on the island of Socotra, fighting erupted in Abyan Province.

Fighting has raged over 24 hours in Abyan Province, with at least 54 fighters killed. Both sides are blaming the other for starting the fighting and “violating” the truce. Monitors are still heading into Abyan, but it’s not clear there is a ceasefire left to monitor.

A coastal province, Abyan has often been contested by the STC, and the same territory was under dispute during the Arab Spring, when Islamist groups tied to al-Qaeda seized several towns in the area, including the provincial capital of Zinjibar.

With an already shattered medical infrastructure due to the five-year US-Saudi siege, Covid-19 has rapidly spread through Yemen. The Arab country lacks the basic necessities for preventative measures like clean water, and a population facing malnourishment is especially vulnerable to the disease. A recent uptick in Saudi bombing might put a country already on the brink of collapse over the edge.

Last week, Saudi warplanes pounded Yemen’s capital Sanaa, in what residents called the worst airstrikes they have seen since the first years of the war. Seventy-seven airstrikes hit several provinces in north Yemen within 24 hours. According to the Houthi’s health ministry and NGOs on the ground, one of the strikes hit a car traveling in the Sadaa province and killed 13 civilians, including four children.

A member of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council has held Saudi Arabia and its regional allies, which are involved in an atrocious military campaign against the impoverished Arab country, fully responsible for a potential oil leakage from a decaying tanker in the Red Sea, and the impending environmental disaster it could cause.

“We do not assume any responsibility for any leakage from the Safer tanker afloat at the sea,” Arabic-language al-Masirah television network quoted Mohammed Ali al-Houthi as saying on Thursday.

He called for immediate actions over the matter, holding the United States, Saudi Arabia and their allies fully liable for any disastrous consequences as they have not allowed Yemen to sell the crude loaded at the tanker.

An airstrike from the US-backed Saudi-led coalition hit a vehicle carrying civilians in north Yemen on Monday. The airstrike killed 13 people, including four children. The same day, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres removed the Saudi coalition from a global list of parties who have harmed children in conflicts.

The international humanitarian group Save the Children said the victims were on their way home from a local market when the vehicle was suddenly bombed. The Houthi’s Health Ministry identified 11 of the victims, which included one woman and four children, ages 12-14.

The coalition often targets civilian infrastructure, which is why Guterres’s move to remove them from the “blacklist” drew sharp condemnation from human rights groups. Saudi warplanes have hit schools, hospitals, water treatment plants, markets, weddings, and other civilian targets.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that he is still seeking approval of his annexation plan by Defense Minister Benny Gantz, a requirement to gain the Trump administration’s support. Officials from Gantz’s Blue and White party have said they cannot approve a plan until Netanyahu properly outlines one.

Speaking at a recent meeting with his Likud party, Netanyahu said he doesn’t have a map ready. “I wanted to bring annexation for approval soon, but the map isn’t ready yet,” Netanyahu said. The prime minister also said he is not sure where the Blue and White party stands.

The “peace plan” released by the Trump administration in January called for Israeli sovereignty over settlements in the West Bank and parts of the Jordan Valley, an area making up approximately one-third of the West Bank. The plan was immediately rejected by Palestinians, but Netanyahu intends on going through with the annexation and is looking to start on July 1st.

Now, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, looks poised finally to give the court some teeth. She is threatening to investigate two states – the US and Israel – whose actions have been particularly damaging to international law in the modern era.

The court is considering examining widespread human rights abuses perpetrated by US soldiers in Afghanistan, and crimes committed by Israeli soldiers in the occupied Palestinian territories, especially Gaza, as well as the officials responsible for Israel’s illegal settlement program.

An investigation of both is critically important: the US has crafted for itself a role as global policeman, while Israel’s flagrant violations of international law have been ongoing for more than half a century.

The US is the most powerful offender, and Israel the most persistent.

Both states have long dreaded this moment – the reason they refused to ratify the Rome Statute that established the ICC.

SOURCE: MINT PRESS
ADEN, YEMEN — As focus begins to turn to developments in Libya and the foreign interference that plagues the Arab country, it seems that Turkey already has its eye elsewhere, preparing for military involvement in Yemen in a move that has sparked concern among Yemenis already struggling against an intervention led by Saudi Arabia, famine and most recently, COVID-19.

Informed sources in Aden and Taiz revealed to MintPress that a militia belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated El-Eslah Party, the ideological and political ally of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, is already engaged in the latest round of fighting in Yemen’s southern provinces, particularly in Abyan and Shabwa.

US forces remain in Syria despite having no legal basis such an invitation from the government or UN Security Council mandate to carry out operations there. Washington continues to ignore demands by Damascus and members of the international community to withdraw its troops illegally stationed there.

Four armoured US military vehicles were stopped by Syrian Army forces while attempting to cross a checkpoint on the M4 highway in the province of Al-Hasakah near the suburbs of Tall Tamer. The American military convoy was travelling towards the village of Derdara as it tried to cross a sliver of territory in the country's northeast controlled by the Syrian Army, and was forced to turn back.

At a cemetery in Yemen’s largest southern city, dozens of fresh graves were a testament to a spike in deaths amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The cemetery workers who bury them don’t know what killed the newly deceased. But there’s no denying that there's been an increasing number of people getting sick in the port city of Aden — likely from the coronavirus.

Many are buried with few precautions and only a small number of attendees. Workers wear masks or cover their faces with a cloth.

And U.S.-Chinese relations could get even worse than they are right now.

Are you prepared for a bumpy ride?

Let’s unpack this…

Last year’s protests came in response to a proposed law that would have allowed the extradition of Hong Kong residents to Beijing for trial on charges that arose in Hong Kong.

That would have deprived Hong Kong residents of legal protections in local law and subjected prisoners to torture and summary execution.

The legislation was proposed by Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam, who many consider a puppet of Beijing.

The demonstrations grew exponentially, ultimately involving hundreds of thousands of protesters.

The list of demands also grew to include more democracy and freedom and adherence to Hong Kong’s rule of law.

Due to social media, these protests were seen around the world.

The proposed bill behind the original protests was scrapped last October, which was a victory for the pro-democracy protesters.

The Yemeni Petroleum Company (YPC) says more than a dozen tankers carrying over 410,000 tons of oil derivatives are stuck outside ports in Yemen as the ongoing blockade imposed by the Saudi-led coalition against the impoverished country hampers its efforts to import vital commodities.

The company announced in a statement on Tuesday that 15 vessels with 410,728 tons of petroleum products have been held up off the coast of Yemen for different lengths of time in flagrant violation of international human rights conventions and humanitarian rules.

The YPC further highlighted that the Saudi-led alliance waging a bloody military onslaught against Yemen blatantly ignores the provisions of the Stockholm agreement, which stressed in its entirety the need for facilitating the arrival of basic materials and humanitarian aid to the Yemen’s western port of Hudaydah in a way that meets the needs and aspirations of the Yemeni nation.

With Washington's backing, Israel is planning to move forward on controversial plans to annex a broad swath of the West Bank, particularly the Jordan Valley, as early as this summer. PM Netanyahu last month issued a likely time table of "within two months".

Arab nations, especially in the gulf, have remained uncharacteristically mum about the whole thing as they focus on countering Iran (which has, it should be noted, actually brought Saudi Arabia into a quiet 'covert' intelligence sharing relationship with Israel over the past couple years).

But Jordan on Friday finally went on the offensive, with King Abdullah telling the German magazine Der Spiegel that Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank “will lead to a massive conflict with Jordan”.

An extraordinary case of child marriage in Yemen has highlighted the rising number of forced, underage weddings. In rare instances, women have managed to fight back, reports Safia Mahdi from Sana'a.

When 12-year-old Hind visited her father in jail a few months ago, he told her she was to marry a fellow inmate. Her groom, 30, had been sentenced to death for drug smuggling and possession, but they would get married anyway, she was told.

When Hind's mother managed to get a court order cancelling the marriage contract, her story became one of the rare cases of reprieve in Yemen, where the rate of child marriage is rising rapidly.

There is still no clear law regulating the minimum age for marriage in Yemen and many girls are forced to marry at ages considered too young to allow for their consent.

Read more: Empowering women in Yemen's civil war

Claiming “credible threats and perceived risks,” the World Health Organization (WHO) announced over the weekend that they are pulling out of parts of northern Yemen under the control of the Houthi movement.

This comes amid mounting concerns over coronavirus picking up pace in Yemen, with some officials implying it was meant to punish the Houthis for not being more transparent about the virus impact within their territory.

Actual threats, however, would almost certainly be related to Saudi Arabia, which has been invading Yemen for years. The WHO has rarely had problems operating in Yemen, even if they’re not always getting along with officials, and the only real threat would be the Saudis occasionally bombing a hospital.

It took one year, three elections and a global pandemic, but Israel finally has a new government, and this time, it is one with a broader mandate than any other in recent memory.

This is mostly thanks to Benny Gantz who repeatedly said that he would not join a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, only to join a Netanyahu-led government at the third time of asking.

He did so under the pretext of creating an emergency government to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. But this is not a government established to deal with any emergency. This is a government with the specific brief of determining when and over what further areas of territory occupied in 1967 Israel will start applying its sovereignty.

Authored by Julia Conley via CommonDreams.org,

The United Nations warned Monday that the World Health Organization would likely impose drastic cuts to humanitarian aid in Yemen this week, a move that follows the Trump administration's slashing of funds for the global health agency.

Lise Grande, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, said WHO is expected to suspend about 80% of its funding for Yemen's hospitals, primary healthcare programs, and other healthcare needs.

The announcement at a panel hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies came two weeks after Yemen reported its first confirmed case of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Although the official number of cases remains low, Al-Monitor reported last week that many cases may have been kept secret from the public and from global health organizations.

Yemen's southern separatists announced self-rule in the port city of Aden and nearby provinces after accusing the Yemeni government of failing to implement provisions of their power-sharing deal.

Saudi Arabia says conditions in Yemen's port of Aden and some southern provinces should return to how they were before a state of emergency was declared by the Southern Transitional Council (STC), the Saudi Press Agency reported on Tuesday, citing the Kingdom's cabinet.

Ravaged by years of conflict, Yemen is facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Its health system has been decimated and many of its people are starving – but the flow of British weapons to Saudi Arabia has not stopped.
Britain’s role in fueling and sustaining Riyadh’s devastating bombing campaign in Yemen has always been despicable, but it becomes especially monstrous as the threat of Covid-19 looms over the war-torn country.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign reserve fund has been depleted massively ever since current King Salman bin Abdul Aziz took power in January 2015, figures from the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority have revealed.
The statistics show that Saudi Arabia held $732 billion in foreign reserves in January 2015 but held only $499 billion in December 2019 – a decline of $233 billion in nearly five years. The massive decline was first reported in an article by David Hearst, the editor of Middle East Eye.

Hearst said that the war in Yemen, massive arms purchases from Western countries, and spending on “vanity projects” like the controversial futuristic city of NEOM had all played their part in draining the Saudi kingdom’s foreign reserves.

The massive loss of wealth – averaging about $46 billion per year, is equal to the total GDP of other countries in the MENA region. The Arabic news website Arabi 21 pointed out that $233 billion is 18 times the yearly budget of a country like Tunisia.

An issue that was always going to come to a head at some point has arisen again in Yemen this weekend, with the Southern Transitional Council (STC), announcing full self-rule of the territory of South Yemen, and an effort to move to reassert the nation as it existed before 1990.

South Yemen existed from 1967 to 1990, mostly as a Soviet-aligned state. A civil war beginning in 1986 ended with South Yemen being annexed by the north. Southern separatists have remained active since, and with the hacking of the United Arab Emirates have become a contesting power to the Saudi-backed “government” that occupies parts of the south. The Saudi-backed government rejected the claim of self-rule, labeling it a “coup.”

Yemen was already the world’s worst humanitarian crisis for the last five years, and the arrival of coronavirus could make it much worse in the next few months.

The country has already been devastated by five years of war, pestilence, and famine, and last week there was a report of the first confirmed case of coronavirus there. Last month, the Trump administration had impeccably bad timing in suspending aid shipments to Houthi-controlled parts of the country because of Houthi interference with the delivery of aid. The humanitarian relief organization Oxfam warned that this suspension of aid comes at exactly the wrong time, and it leaves an already terribly weakened Yemen even more vulnerable to the ravages of the pandemic:

A U.S. officer, along with two Kurdish fighters, was killed on Monday in an ambush in Syria's eastern province of Deir al-Zour, state news agency SANA reported.

The ambush, carried out by an unknown group, targeted vehicles of the U.S.-led coalition and fighters of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the village of Sur in Deir al-Zour's countryside.

The slain U.S. officer was transported to the Shaddadi base, which is run by the U.S. forces, in the southern countryside of the northeastern province of Hasakah, SANA said, providing no further details.

The U.S. forces and Kurdish-led fighters control areas in Deir al-Zour and Hasakah after dislodging Islamic State (IS) militants in battles in 2018.

Five years ago the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia invaded neighboring Yemen. The conflict was supposed to be quick and simple, over in a few weeks. Now the once-haughty Saudi royals have offered a ceasefire, after their opponents, Houthi irregulars, captured the province of al-Jawf.

The conflict has created a horrific humanitarian crisis. Yemen, which has long been divided, impoverished, and embattled, is wrecked, and is unlikely to emerge as one complete nation. The cost has been roughly 100,000 dead in combat (nearly 20,000 of them civilians); another 130,000 dead from the consequences of the conflict; a million people suffering from Cholera; 20 million Yemenis facing food insecurity; sixteen million regularly hungry; and ten million at risk of famine.

While Europeans and Arabs are being absorbed by the coronavirus, Anglo-Saxons are changing the world order. Under US command, the United Kingdom took control of the Red Sea entrance; the United Arab Emirates turned on Saudi Arabia and inflicted a bitter defeat on South Yemen, while the Houthis did the same in North Yemen. Yemen is now split into two separate states and the territorial integrity of Saudi Arabia is threatened.

Looking to retaliate after Houthi missile fire into Saudi Arabia, Saudi warplanes carried out multiple airstrikes against different targets in the capital of Sanaa. hitting a presidential palace, a school, and an airbase, along with a military training site.

The coalition insisted that all of the targets hit were “legitimate military targets” that threaten civilians. Casualty reports suggest one person was killed in the strikes, along with about 70 horses who were kept at the military training site.

These are some of the biggest Saudi strikes in months, as both sides had dialed back the attacks to focus on possible peace talks. There is still no deal in sight, but escalations have led them to trade strikes on one another here and there.

he Rukban camp, which houses up to 25,000 refugees is located in the US-controlled zone around its unauthorised military base at Al-Tanf, making it almost impossible for humanitarian workers to access the area.

"The American side cynically seeks to take advantage of the situation concerning the spread of the coronavirus and is putting pressure on the UN leadership to bring 'humanitarian aid' to the Rukban refugee camp under the guise of diagnostic tools to feed controlled militants", the interagency coordinating headquarters of Russia and Syria said in a joint statement on Saturday.

The military stressed that the disastrous situation in the camp is a result of the illegal occupation of the area by American forces, noting that the refugees should be returned to their homes in the territory under the control of the Syrian government.

Houthi rebels in Yemen over the weekend launched what's being described as among the largest assaults on Saudi Arabia since the start of the war five years ago.

Starting on Saturday the Saudi military said it intercepted at least two ballistic missiles over the capital of Riyadh, as well as over the southern city of Jizan, in the first such major attack in more than a year.

Saudi military spokesman Turki al-Malki confirmed there were injuries among residents on the ground from "debris scattering on some residential areas" in Riyadh and Jizan.

Hand-washing to combat the spread of coronavirus is the order of the day, but it's an unaffordable luxury for millions in war-ravaged Yemen where clean water is dangerously scarce.

Yemen's broken healthcare system has yet to register any cases of the disease, but if the pandemic does hit, the impact will be unimaginable in a country where five years of conflict has created what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Five years after a Saudi-led military coalition intervened in Yemen to support the government against the Iran-backed Huthi rebels, some 80 percent of the population is in need of aid.

- Cholera and disease -

Yemen suffered one of its worst ever outbreaks of cholera in 2017.

"Years of under-investment in public water and sanitation systems provided the foundations for this outbreak," Bismarck Swangin, UNICEF Yemen's chief of communications, told AFP.

"The risk still remains if access to water continues to be low."

Saudi Arabia has just offered to host a “Virtual” G20 summit, bringing the world’s leaders together to address the coronavirus pandemic. While the world absolutely needs much better international coordination in response to this catastrophic pandemic, Saudi Arabia’s ruling family is one of the last governments we should want convening a conversation on solving any humanitarian crisis, let alone a crisis of this magnitude.

Saudi Arabia’s ruling family has repeatedly demonstrated its opposition to the very principles that enable a successful response to a global pandemic. To successfully address a public health crisis, governments must embrace information transparency and a willingness to listen to independent voices who might challenge their preconceived notions. The Saudi dictatorship has consistently done the opposite, deploying brutal campaigns of internal repression and censorship to silence dissent.

Yemen’s Houthi Ansaruallh movement says the years-long Saudi-led war and blockade on the impoverished Arab country has increased the infant mortality rate alarmingly.

The Ansarullah said Thursday the ongoing Saudi military aggression against Yemen has fueled famine, poverty and diseases, resulting in the deaths of 50,000 children annually, many of whom are under a month old.

Saudi Arabia and its allies launched a deadly military aggression against Yemen in an attempt to reinstall a Riyadh-backed former regime and eliminate the Houthi movement, which has been defending the country along with the armed forces.

The Western-backed offensive, coupled with a naval blockade, has destroyed the country’s infrastructure.