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Yemeni Activists Urge Int'l Intervention to Stop Houthi Plan to Demolish 500 Buildings in Old Sanaa

A general view showing the buildings included in the UNESCO list in the Old City of Sanaa (EPA)
A general view showing the buildings included in the UNESCO list in the Old City of Sanaa (EPA)
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Yemeni Activists Urge Int'l Intervention to Stop Houthi Plan to Demolish 500 Buildings in Old Sanaa

A general view showing the buildings included in the UNESCO list in the Old City of Sanaa (EPA)
A general view showing the buildings included in the UNESCO list in the Old City of Sanaa (EPA)

Yemeni intellectuals and activists urged interventions to stop the Houthi militia's plan to demolish 500 archaeological buildings in the Old City of Sanaa, included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

They warned that the planned demolition includes four crucial markets intending to establish a sectarian shrine in the city.

Yemeni intellectuals fear that the behavior of the Houthis would remove the Old City from the World Heritage List, as the militias aim to change the demographic composition of the Yemeni capital.

A statement signed by dozens of Yemeni writers, authors, and activists expressed the Houthi militia's intention to destroy several homes and markets, urging the coup authority to refrain from building the shrine, which could damage the people and the area.

They expressed their solidarity with the residents of the Old City.

Residents described the plan as a "new Houthi crime against Yemen's land, history and heritage," saying it was complementary to previous steps targeting the city and changing its demographic composition.

The group previously hiked the rent of state-owned shops and homes and confiscated other facilities claiming they were public properties.

Yemen's Minister of Information, Culture, and Tourism, Moammar el-Eryani, warned that the militias have begun to draw up construction plans to remove the four ancient markets and turn them into a shrine.

Eryani pointed out that the Houthi militia previously demolished the historic al-Nahrain Mosque, one of the oldest ancient mosques in the world, and leveled it to the ground.

The minister affirmed that the Houthi militia's systematic targeting and destruction of archaeological and heritage sites fall within its plan to change Yemen's identity and cultural, civilizational, and historical heritage.

He warned that the group aims to replace the Yemeni culture with an identity imported from Iran, which violates all international laws and conventions.

Eryani urged the international community, the UN, and relevant international organizations, led by UNESCO and ALESCO, specialized studies and research centers, and all interested parties, to condemn the "heinous crime."

He called for international intervention to stop the massacre that the Houthi militia intends to commit against one of the World Heritage sites subject to international protection, as the property of all humankind and part of humanity's history and identity.

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Arab World

Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
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Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)

Family members of Syrians who disappeared in the 14-year civil war on Sunday gathered in the city of Daraa and called on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them.

The United Nations in 2021 estimated that over 130,000 Syrians were taken away and disappeared, many of them detained by Bashar al-Assad's network of intelligence agencies, as well as by opposition fighters and the extremist ISIS group. Advocacy group The Syrian Campaign says some 112,000 are still missing to this day.

When opposition led by group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham overthrew President Bashar Assad in April, they stormed prisons and released detainees from the ousted government's dungeons.

Families of the missing quickly rushed to the prisons seeking their loved ones. While there were some reunions, rescue services also discovered mass graves around the country and used whatever remains they could retrieve to identify the dead.

Wafa Mustafa held a placard of her father, Ali, who was detained by the Assad government's security forces in 2013. She fled a week later to Germany, fearing she would also be detained, and hasn't heard from him since.

Like many other Syrians who fled the conflict or went into exile for their activism, she often held protests and rallied in European cities. Now, she has returned twice since Assad's ouster, trying to figure out her father's whereabouts.

“I’m trying, feeling both hope and despair, to find any answer on the fate of my father,” she told The Associated Press. “I searched inside the prisons, the morgues, the hospitals, and through the bodies of the martyrs, but I still couldn’t find anything.”

A United Nations-backed commission on Friday urged the government led by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa to preserve evidence and anything they can document from prisons in the ongoing search for the disappeared and to pursue perpetrators.

Some foreign nationals are missing in Syria as well, notably American journalist Austin Tice, whose mother visited Syria in January and met with al-Sharaa. Tice has not been heard from other than a video released weeks after his disappearance in 2012 that showed him blindfolded and held by armed men.

Syria’s conflict started as one of the popular uprisings of the so-called 2011 Arab Spring, before Assad crushed the largely peaceful protests and a civil war erupted. Half a million people have been killed and more than 5 million left the country as refugees.