Yemen Rejects Houthi Conditions on Decaying Oil Tanker

Yemen's Safer oil tanker. AFP file photo
Yemen's Safer oil tanker. AFP file photo
TT

Yemen Rejects Houthi Conditions on Decaying Oil Tanker

Yemen's Safer oil tanker. AFP file photo
Yemen's Safer oil tanker. AFP file photo

Houthi insurgents use the floating storage and offloading (FSO) facility Safer as a weapon and for political blackmailing, the Yemeni caretaker government said on Tuesday, calling for the UN Security Council to end persistent "hijacking of the tanker by militias that threaten Yemen and the world."

In a tweet, Yemen's foreign ministry slammed the Houthis for denying the UN team access to the vessel, and “using the FSO as a weapon and for political blackmailing.”

The Houthis obstinately put unattainable conditions, such as prolonging the life expectancy of an unfixable derelict reservoir, keeping Safer as a time bomb at its hands without caring for risky consequences, it added.

The FSO's cargo of crude needs to be immediately unloaded to avoid an environmental, humanitarian disaster due to the facility's continuously deteriorating condition, the ministry warned.

While the government unconditionally approved for the UN team access, and agreed to have the crude revenues used in paying the civil servants' salaries across Yemen, the Houthis persistently refuse to do so.

The Safer, which is located off the Yemeni seaport of Ras Isa, has not been maintained since 2014, with corrosion making the FSO and its 1.2 million barrels of crude at risk of looming explosion.

Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, the head of the so-called Houthi Revolutionary Committee, said that the insurgents demanded that the UN brings in a third party to assess the situation on board the derelict ship.

“What worries the UN, its chief, and the coalition (Arab Coalition)? If they claim to be keen on the environment, they should involve a third party, represented by Germany or Sweden, in the maintenance of Safer,” al-Houthi tweeted.

The UN has recently called for expediting the issuance of needed access permits to the UN team of experts to assess and perform maintenance on the rundown vessel.



Israeli Forces Kill 14 People in Gaza, Force New Displacement in the North

 A Palestinian man inspects the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip November 13, 2024. (Reuters)
A Palestinian man inspects the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip November 13, 2024. (Reuters)
TT

Israeli Forces Kill 14 People in Gaza, Force New Displacement in the North

 A Palestinian man inspects the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip November 13, 2024. (Reuters)
A Palestinian man inspects the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip November 13, 2024. (Reuters)

Israeli military strikes killed at least 14 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, as Israeli forces deepened their incursion into Beit Hanoun town in the north, forcing most remaining residents to leave.

Residents said Israeli forces besieged shelters housing displaced families and the remaining population, which some estimated at a few thousand, ordering them to head south through a checkpoint separating two towns and a refugee camp in the north from Gaza City.

Men were held for questioning, while women and children were allowed to continue towards Gaza City, residents and Palestinian medics said.

Israel's campaign in the north of Gaza, and the evacuation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the area, has fueled claims from Palestinians that it is clearing the area for use as a buffer zone and potentially for a return of Jewish settlers.

"The scenes of the 1948 catastrophe are being repeated. Israel is repeating its massacres, displacement and destruction," said Saed, 48, a resident of Beit Lahiya, who arrived in Gaza City on Wednesday.

"North Gaza is being turned into a large buffer zone, Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing under the sight and hearing of the impotent world," he told Reuters via a chat app.

Saed was referring to the 1948 Middle East Arab-Israeli war which gave birth to the state of Israel and saw the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their hometowns and villages in what is now Israel.

NO PLANS FOR SETTLERS' RETURN

The Israeli military has denied any such intention, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he does not want to reverse the 2005 withdrawal of settlers from Gaza. Hardliners in his government have talked openly about going back.

It said forces have killed hundreds of Hamas fighters in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun during its new military offensive, which began more than a month ago. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad armed wing claimed killing several Israeli soldiers during ambushes and anti-tank rocket fire.

On Tuesday, the United States stressed at the United Nations that "there must be no forcible displacement, nor policy of starvation in Gaza" by Israel, warning such policies would have grave implications under US and international law.

Medics said five people were killed in an Israeli strike that hit a group of people outside Kamal Adwan Hospital near Beit Lahiya, while five others were killed in two separate strikes in Nuseirat in central Gaza Strip where the army began a limited raid two days ago.

In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, one man was killed and several others were wounded in an Israeli airstrike, while three Palestinians were killed in two separate Israeli airstrikes in Shejaia suburb of Gaza City, medics added.

Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel last October, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

More than 43,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza over the past year, Palestinian health officials say, and Gaza has been reduced to a wasteland of wrecked buildings and piles of rubble, where more than 2 million Gazans are seeking shelter in makeshift tents and facing shortages of food and medicines.