Houthis Set up Training Camp in Yemen’s Mahwit Governorate

The Red Sea port of Hodeidah, Yemen July 26, 2017. (Reuters)
The Red Sea port of Hodeidah, Yemen July 26, 2017. (Reuters)
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Houthis Set up Training Camp in Yemen’s Mahwit Governorate

The Red Sea port of Hodeidah, Yemen July 26, 2017. (Reuters)
The Red Sea port of Hodeidah, Yemen July 26, 2017. (Reuters)

A Houthi-run militia training center is threatening to further destroy civility and the livelihood of locals in Yemen’s central west Al Mahwit governorate.

Locals reported that child soldiers were being enrolled in the center as well.

“Houthis coupist militias transformed the headquarters of an electricity provider in the Hafash district into a training center for fighters. Recruits are put through extensive sectarian and combat training there before deploying to battlefronts,” Al Mahwit’s official news center reported.

“Led by officer Abu al-Jibril al-Thari, Houthis are training cadets in a hangar, which was formerly used by residents of the area to house electricity generators in the village of Jabal Naaman, one of the largest villages in the region,” it added, stressing that the situation has spread anxieties among the locals.

The majority of conscripts are young school children who were brainwashed out of education and enrolled into the sectarian effort. Little do they know that Houthi battlefront formations often employ child soldiers as human shields or use them as cannon fodder on frontlines.

The Iran-backed Houthis have devised a plan for transforming schools and other civilian premises into areas they overrun into training centers, militant housing and operation rooms.

Often, Houthi gunmen shelter themselves during Arab coalition air raids in civilian buildings. They later fabricate allegations about the coalition hitting “noncombatant targets.”

In parallel, demining teams affiliated with the Yemeni army’s Giants Brigades announced that they have successfully defused projectiles, mines and highly-explosive devices left behind by Houthi militias south of Hodeidah city.

“Engineering teams started drilling operations and found large rocket-propelled grenades and large quantities of improvised explosive devices planted by the militias and which can be remotely detonated,” the brigade’s news outlet said, adding that other planted mines were dismantled.

Two 500-kg rockets were found, another five 80-kg explosives and different types of mines were also found and dismantled. According to the news outlet, had the arms been left unchecked, they were sufficient enough to cause massive damage.



UN: Israel's War Plans Threaten 'Continued Existence' of Palestinians in Gaza

Palestinians inspect the damage at a school used as a shelter by displaced residents that was hit twice by Israeli army strikes on Tuesday, killing more than 25 people, in Bureij, central Gaza Strip, Wednesday, May 7, 2025.(AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians inspect the damage at a school used as a shelter by displaced residents that was hit twice by Israeli army strikes on Tuesday, killing more than 25 people, in Bureij, central Gaza Strip, Wednesday, May 7, 2025.(AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
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UN: Israel's War Plans Threaten 'Continued Existence' of Palestinians in Gaza

Palestinians inspect the damage at a school used as a shelter by displaced residents that was hit twice by Israeli army strikes on Tuesday, killing more than 25 people, in Bureij, central Gaza Strip, Wednesday, May 7, 2025.(AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians inspect the damage at a school used as a shelter by displaced residents that was hit twice by Israeli army strikes on Tuesday, killing more than 25 people, in Bureij, central Gaza Strip, Wednesday, May 7, 2025.(AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

The UN rights chief voiced deepened concerns Wednesday that Israel's plans to expand its offensive in Gaza aim to create conditions threatening Palestinians' "continued existence" in the territory.

Israel's military has called up tens of thousands of reservists for an expanded offensive in the Gaza Strip, which an official said would entail the "conquest" of the Palestinian territory.

"Israel's reported plans to forcibly transfer Gaza's population to a small area in the south of the Strip and threats by Israeli officials to deport Palestinians outside of Gaza further aggravate concerns that Israel's actions are aimed at inflicting on Palestinians conditions of life increasingly incompatible with their continued existence in Gaza as a group," Volker Turk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement.

"There is no reason to believe that doubling down on military strategies, which, for a year and eight months, have not led to a durable resolution, including the release of all hostages, will now succeed," he said.

"Instead, expanding the offensive on Gaza will almost certainly cause further mass displacement, more deaths and injuries of innocent civilians, and the destruction of Gaza's little remaining infrastructure."

Nearly all of the Palestinian territory's 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once during the war, sparked by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

A more than two-month Israeli blockade on all aid into Gaza has worsened the humanitarian crisis.

According to AFP, Turk warned that stepping up the Israeli offensive "would only compound the misery and suffering inflicted by the complete blockade on the entry of basic goods for almost nine weeks now".

"Gaza's residents have already been deprived of all lifesaving necessities, particularly food, with relentless Israeli attacks on community kitchens and those trying to maintain a minimum of law and order," he said.

"Any use of starvation of the civilian population as a method of war constitutes a war crime," Turk said, adding that "the only lasting solution to this crisis lies through full compliance with international law".

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says at least 2,507 people had been killed since Israel resumed its campaign in mid-March, bringing the overall death toll from the war to 52,615.