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Houthi leader threatens to attack US warships if Washington targets Yemen
The leader of Yemen's Houthis warned on Wednesday they would strike U.S. warships if the Iranian-backed militia was targeted by Washington, which this week set up a multinational force to counter Houthi attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea, Reuters reported.
The Houthis, which control vast amounts of territory in Yemen after years of war, have since last month fired drones and missiles at international vessels sailing through the Red Sea, attacks it says respond to Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip.
The U.S.-led security initiative will see Washington and ten other, mostly NATO countries patrol the Red Sea to deter and respond to future Houthi attacks that have so far led to major global shipping lines rerouting around Africa instead.
"We will not stand idly by if the Americans are tempted to escalate further and commit foolishness by targeting our country or waging war against it," Abdel-Malek al-Houthi said.
"Any American targeting of our country will be targeted by us, and we will make American battleships, interests, and navigation a target for our missiles, drones, and military operations," he said in a televised speech.
The crisis in the Red Sea has grown out of the war between Israel and Gaza's ruling Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, the latest conflict in the Middle East to pit the U.S. and its allies against regional power Iran and its Arab militia proxies, read the report.
The war began on Oct. 7 when Hamas fighters stormed across the Gaza border into southern Israel, where Israeli authorities say the militants killed about 1,200 mostly civilian Israelis and foreigners.
Israel’s retaliatory bombardment and invasion of Gaza, which Israeli officials state is aimed at wiping out Hamas, has killed nearly 20,000 Palestinians, according to health officials in the densely populated, coastal enclave.
Iranian proxies including the Houthis and Lebanese Hezbollah have fired rockets at Israel since the conflict began. The Houthis, meanwhile, have stepped up their Red Sea attacks, threatening to target all ships heading to Israel and warning shipping companies against dealing with Israeli ports.
The attacks have disrupted a key trade route that links Europe and North America with Asia via the Suez Canal and caused container shipping costs to rise sharply as companies seek to ship their goods via alternative, often longer, routes.
Dubbed "Operation Prosperity Guardian", Britain, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain, along with the U.S., will conduct joint patrols in the southern Red Sea and the adjacent Gulf of Aden.
"As long as the Americans want to enter into a direct war with us, they should know that we are not those who fear them, and that they are facing an entire people," al-Houthi said.
He warned the Americans against sending soldiers to Yemen, saying they would "face something harsher than what they faced in Afghanistan and what they suffered in Vietnam."
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Saudi Arabia plans $600 billion in new US investment, trade over four years
Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told President Donald Trump that the kingdom wants to put $600 billion into expanded investment and trade with the United States over the next four years, the Saudi State news agency said early on Thursday.
In a phone call between the two leaders, the crown prince said the Trump administration's expected reforms could create "unprecedented economic prosperity", the state news agency reported, according to Reuters.
The report said Saudi Arabia wants its investments to capitalize on these conditions. It did not detail the source of the $600 billion, whether it would be public or private spending nor how the money would be deployed.
The investment "could increase further if additional opportunities arise", the agency quoted Bin Salman as telling Trump.
Trump fostered close ties with Gulf states including Saudi Arabia during his first term. The country invested $2 billion in a firm formed by Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and former aide, after Trump left office.
Trump said following his inauguration on Monday that he would consider making Saudi Arabia his first destination for a foreign visit if Riyadh agreed to buy $500 billion worth of American products, similar to what he did in his first term.
"I did it with Saudi Arabia last time because they agreed to buy $450 billion worth of our product. I said I'll do it but you have to buy American product, and they agreed to do that," Trump said, referring to his 2017 visit to the Gulf kingdom.
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Saudi foreign minister says Trump does not raise risk of Iran-Israel war
Saudi’s Prince Faisal also said the new Syrian government had inherited a broken country with no real institutions and needed international help to rebuild and start from scratch.
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said on Tuesday he did not see Donald Trump's new administration increasing the risk of an Israel-Iran conflict, addressing an issue the region has feared since the start of Israel's war in Gaza, Reuters reported.
Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud also said in Davos that he hoped President Trump's approach to Iran would be met with a willingness by Tehran to positively engage with the U.S. administration and address the issue of its nuclear programme.
"Obviously a war between Iran and Israel, any war in our region is something we should try to avoid as much as possible," Prince Faisal said during the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in the Swiss mountain resort.
"I don't see the incoming U.S. administration as contributory to the risk of war, on the contrary, President Trump has been quite clear he does not favor conflict."
Fears of war between Israel and Iran increased after the Tehran-backed Palestinian Hamas group led a deadly cross-border raid on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, triggering an Israeli military offensive that dragged Iran's allies, including Lebanon's Hezbollah and Yemen's Houthis, into confrontation with Israel, read the report.
Israel unleashed a devastating war against Hamas in Gaza, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, decimating the military structure of both groups, shattering Iran's network of influence in the Middle East and upending powerful alliances that led to the ousting of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, another Iran ally.
Fifteen months after the October attacks, a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas was reached.
Prince Faisal was speaking at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Switzerland on a panel along with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who helped broker the ceasefire agreement.
The Qatari premier said the decisive involvement of Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, had made a profound difference and led to significant progress in reaching the deal.
He said he hoped the Palestinian Authority would return to play a governing role in Gaza once the war with Israel comes to an end, adding that Gazans -- and not any other country -- should decide how the enclave is to be governed.
How Gaza will be governed after the war was not directly addressed in the deal between Israel and Hamas.
Israel has rejected any governing role for Hamas, which ran Gaza before the war, but it has been almost equally opposed to rule by the Palestinian Authority, the body set up under the Oslo interim peace accords three decades ago that has limited governing power in the West Bank, Reuters reported.
Saudi's Prince Faisal also said the new Syrian government had inherited a broken country with no real institutions and needed international help to rebuild and start from scratch.
"It is essential to engage, show patience, and extend effective support to the administration in Damascus by putting out a helping hand," he said.
Lifting the burden of sanctions placed on Syria due to the actions of the previous Assad government would be a key step forward. Although the U.S. and Europe have granted some waivers, further action is necessary, the minister said.
"Syria is a shattered nation in desperate need of rebuilding. The earlier we engage and the more support we offer, the greater the chances of a successful and stable transition," he said.
Qatar's Sheikh Mohammed said Trump’s return to the White House presented significant opportunities for collaboration, emphasizing the potential to work together to transform the Middle East into a region of stability and security.
"President Trump's whole notion of making America great again is something very important. We also want to see the Middle East great again." he said.
Prince Faisal, whose country shunned Lebanon for years over the strong influence of Hezbollah on state affairs, also said he would visit Beirut later this week, marking the first such trip by a Saudi foreign minister in more than a decade, read the report.
He said the election of a Lebanese president after a lengthy power vacuum was positive, but that Riyadh needed to see real reforms in order to raise its engagement in the country.
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Hamas frees hostages, Israel releases Palestinian prisoners on day one of ceasefire
The first phase of the truce took effect following a three-hour delay during which Israeli warplanes and artillery pounded the Gaza Strip.
Hamas released three Israeli hostages and Israel released 90 Palestinian prisoners on Sunday, the first day of a ceasefire suspending a 15-month-old war that has devastated the Gaza Strip and inflamed the Middle East, Reuters reported.
The truce allowed Palestinians to return to bombed-out neighborhoods to begin rebuilding their lives, while relief trucks delivered much-needed aid. Elsewhere in Gaza, crowds cheered Hamas fighters who emerged from hiding.
Hamas released three Israeli hostages and Israel released 90 Palestinian prisoners on Sunday, the first day of a ceasefire suspending a 15-month-old war that has devastated the Gaza Strip and inflamed the Middle East.
The truce allowed Palestinians to return to bombed-out neighborhoods to begin rebuilding their lives, while relief trucks delivered much-needed aid. Elsewhere in Gaza, crowds cheered Hamas fighters who emerged from hiding.
The Israeli military said Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari had been reunited with their mothers and released a video showing them in apparent good health. Damari, who lost two fingers when she was shot the day she was abducted, smiled and embraced her mother as she held up a bandaged hand.
"I would like you to tell them: Romi, Doron and Emily – an entire nation embraces you. Welcome home," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a commander by phone.
At Sheba Medical Center, the women were reunited with their families in long embraces that went from tears to laughter. A smiling Damari was draped in an Israeli flag. They were among more than 250 people abducted and 1,200 killed in a Hamas raid on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has said.
More than 47,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Israeli attacks, according to medical officials in Gaza. Nearly the entire 2.3 million population of Gaza is homeless. Around 400 Israeli soldiers have also died, read the report.
The truce calls for fighting to stop, aid to be sent in to Gaza and 33 of the nearly 100 remaining Israeli and foreign hostages to go free over the six-week first phase in return for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Many of the hostages are believed to be dead.
In the north of the Gaza Strip, Palestinians picked their way through a devastated landscape of rubble and twisted metal that had been bombed into oblivion in the war's most intense fighting.
"I feel like at last I found some water to drink after being lost in the desert for 15 months," said Aya, who said she had been displaced from her Gaza City home for more than a year.
The first phase of the truce took effect following a three-hour delay during which Israeli warplanes and artillery pounded the Gaza Strip.
That last-minute blitz killed 13 people, Palestinian health authorities said. Israel blamed Hamas for being late to deliver the names of hostages it would free, and said it had struck terrorists. Hamas said the holdup in providing the list was technical.
"Today the guns in Gaza have gone silent," U.S. President Joe Biden said on his last full day in office, welcoming a truce that had eluded U.S. diplomacy for more than a year. "We've reached this point today because of the pressure Israel built on Hamas, backed by the United States."
For Hamas, the truce provided an opportunity to emerge from the shadows after 15 months in hiding. Hamas policemen dressed in blue police uniforms swiftly deployed in some areas, and armed fighters drove through the southern city of Khan Younis, where a crowd cheered, "Greetings to Al-Qassam Brigades," the group's armed wing.
"All the resistance factions are staying in spite of Netanyahu," one fighter told Reuters.
There is no detailed plan in place to govern Gaza after the war, much less rebuild it. Any return of Hamas will test the patience of Israel, which has said it will resume fighting unless the militant group is fully dismantled, Reuters reported.
Hardline National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir quit the cabinet over the ceasefire, though his party said it would not try to bring down Netanyahu's government. The other most prominent hardliner, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, stayed in the government but said he would quit if the war ends without Hamas completely destroyed.
The truce took effect on the eve of Monday's inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. Trump's national security adviser-designate, Mike Waltz, said that if Hamas reneges on the agreement, the United States would support Israel "in doing what it has to do."
"Hamas will never govern Gaza. That is completely unacceptable," he said.
The streets in shattered Gaza City were already busy with groups of people waving the Palestinian flag and filming the scenes on their mobile phones. Several carts loaded with household possessions travelled down a thoroughfare scattered with rubble and debris, read the report.
Ahmed Abu Ayham, 40, of Gaza City said that while the ceasefire may have spared lives, the losses and destruction made it no time for celebration.
"We are in pain, deep pain and it is time to hug one another and cry," he said.
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