Houthis Admit to Pursuing Greater Weapons Capabilities

A shipment of grain is unloaded at the Red Sea port of Hodeidah. Reuters
A shipment of grain is unloaded at the Red Sea port of Hodeidah. Reuters
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Houthis Admit to Pursuing Greater Weapons Capabilities

A shipment of grain is unloaded at the Red Sea port of Hodeidah. Reuters
A shipment of grain is unloaded at the Red Sea port of Hodeidah. Reuters

Houthi coup militias in Yemen claimed responsibility for terror attacks that killed dozens in the last two months. Boasting about the militia’s missile, rocket and drone capabilities, a senior Houthi spokesman said Iran-armed group can strike targets inside neighboring Saudi territory.

In parallel to Houthi militiamen scaling up attacks that violate a UN-brokered ceasefire deal for the strategic Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, coup leaders are openly debating on how to distribute illegitimately collected levies at docks and whether or not the money should be used to pay salaries to Houthi gunmen.

Houthi spokesman and it’s the group’s acting foreign minister, Mohamed Abdel Salam Fleeta, touted Houthi weapons capabilities as efficient enough to stage further terrorist attacks against civilian targets inside Saudi Arabia.

In a tweet, Fleeta said that information revealed at another Houthi officer’s presser shows the "qualitative development" the pro-Iranian group war tactics have seen.

Houthi officer Yahya Saree had listed the outcome of two months of continuous terrorist attacks waged by Houthi gunmen against civilians in Yemeni governorates such as Taiz, Ad Dali' and Hajjah, or in cross-border offensives striking inside Saudi territory.

Saree acknowledged that the group is responsible for launching more than 347 terrorist attacks within the last 60 days, and admitted to actively pursuing to boost military capabilities.

Nevertheless, the Houthi officer failed to mention great losses incurred by the insurgency group at the hands of qualitative strikes spearheaded by the pro-government national army and adjunct Arab Coalition forces.

As for details on the group’s decision to acquire advanced weapons systems, Houthi leadership said its army engineers are close to drafting a new collection of Iran-made drones and ballistic missiles to the insurgency’s depots.

According to reports published by the militia’s official media outlets, the new arms additions will be put to display at an exclusive exhibition named after the late coup leader, Saleh Ali al-Sammad.

This comes at a time Yemen is suffering the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, Houthis’ persistent looting of internationally-sent relief aid and raiding of the countries public institutions.



Displaced Syrians Who Have Returned Home Face a Fragile Future, Says UN Refugees Chief

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani (R) meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in the Syrian capital Damascus on June 20, 2025. (SANA / AFP)
A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani (R) meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in the Syrian capital Damascus on June 20, 2025. (SANA / AFP)
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Displaced Syrians Who Have Returned Home Face a Fragile Future, Says UN Refugees Chief

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani (R) meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in the Syrian capital Damascus on June 20, 2025. (SANA / AFP)
A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani (R) meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in the Syrian capital Damascus on June 20, 2025. (SANA / AFP)

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said Friday that more than two million Syrian refugees and internally displaced people have returned home since the fall of the government of Bashar al-Assad in December.

Speaking during a visit to Damascus that coincided with World Refugee Day, Grandi described the situation in Syria as “fragile and hopeful” and warned that the returnees may not remain if Syria does not get more international assistance to rebuild its war-battered infrastructure.

“How can we make sure that the return of the Syrian displaced or refugees is sustainable, that people don’t move again because they don’t have a house or they don’t have a job or they don’t have electricity?” Grandi asked a small group of journalists after the visit, during which he met with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani and spoke with returning refugees.

“What is needed for people to return, electricity but also schools, also health centers, also safety and security,” he said.

Syria’s near 14-year civil war, which ended last December with the ouster of Assad in a lightning opposition offensive, killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million.

Grandi said that 600,000 Syrians have returned to the country since Assad’s fall, and about another 1.5 million internally displaced people returned to their homes in the same period.

However, there is little aid available for the returnees, with multiple crises in the region -- including the new Israel-Iran war -- and shrinking support from donors. The UNHCR has reduced programs for Syrian refugees in neighboring countries, including healthcare, education and cash support for hundreds of thousands in Lebanon.

“The United States suspended all foreign assistance, and we were very much impacted, like others, and also other donors in Europe are reducing foreign assistance,” Grandi said, adding: “I tell the Europeans in particular, be careful. Remember 2015, 2016 when they cut food assistance to the Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, the Syrians moved toward Europe.”

Some have also fled for security reasons since Assad's fall. While the situation has stabilized since then, particularly in Damascus, the new government has struggled to extend its control over all areas of the country and to bring a patchwork of former opposition groups together into a national army.

Grandi said the UNHCR has been in talks with the Lebanese government, which halted official registration of new refugees in 2015, to register the new refugees and “provide them with basic assistance.”

“This is a complex community, of course, for whom the chances of return are not so strong right now,” he said. He said he had urged the Syrian authorities to make sure that measures taken in response to the attacks on civilians “are very strong and to prevent further episodes of violence.”

The Israel-Iran war has thrown further fuel on the flames in a region already dealing with multiple crises. Grandi noted that Iran is hosting millions of refugees from Afghanistan who may now be displaced again.

The UN does not yet have a sense of how many people have fled the conflict between Iran and Israel, he said.

“We know that some Iranians have gone to neighboring countries, like Azerbaijan or Armenia, but we have very little information. No country has asked for help yet,” he said. “And we have very little sense of the internal displacement, because my colleagues who are in Iran - they’re working out of bunkers because of the bombs.”