by The dual specter of a widening regional war and intensifying civilian suffering loomed over the Middle East on Saturday, as the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen threatened to respond to US airstrikes, and a day after a senior UN official warned of a “horrible situation.” “Humanitarian crisis in Gaza that, according to him, was hurtling towards famine.
A US missile attack, launched from a warship in the Red Sea, hit a radar station outside the Yemeni capital Sanaa early Saturday. The lone attack came about 24 hours after a much broader barrage of U.S.-led strikes against nearly 30 sites in northern and western Yemen that were aimed at deterring Houthi attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea, a of the busiest shipping routes in the world.
Houthi officials attempted to ignore the latest attack, saying it would have little impact on their ability to continue such attacks. Their stated goal is to punish Israel for blocking humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza, although Yemeni analysts say the crisis also presents the Houthis with a welcome distraction from growing criticism at home.
The greatest risk is likely to be borne by ordinary Yemenis, whose impoverished nation has been crushed by years of civil war and who now face a high-stakes confrontation that endangers a fragile 20-month truce.
In northern Gaza, where the crippling three-month Israeli siege has taken the brunt, bodies remain on the roads and hungry residents stop aid trucks “looking for anything they can get to survive,” said Martin Griffiths, the UN’s top aid official. the United Nations Security Council on Friday. Saying that the risk of famine in Gaza was “growing day by day,” he blamed Israel for repeated delays and denials of permission to humanitarian convoys bringing aid to the area.
Since Jan. 1, only three of 21 convoys scheduled for northern Gaza, carrying food, medicine and other essential supplies, have received Israeli permission to enter the area, a U.N. spokesman said Thursday. More supplies have been distributed in southern Gaza, near the two border crossings that are open during limited hours, but aid workers say much more than that is needed to significantly help Gaza civilians.
Qatar is mediating talks on a proposal for Israel to allow more medicine into Gaza in exchange for prescription drugs being sent to Israeli hostages held by Hamas, officials said.
Famine experts say the proportion of Gaza residents at risk of famine is higher than anywhere else since a United Nations-affiliated body began measuring extreme hunger 20 years ago. Academics say it has been generations since the world saw food deprivation on such a scale in war.
The arrival of the winter cold has exacerbated the struggle to survive, Griffiths said. Much of Gaza’s population has been crammed into cramped, run-down shelters in the south, with limited access to clean water and where aid workers warn the disease is spreading rapidly.
In response to questions, Israel’s government denied Friday that it was obstructing aid, saying its permission depended on the security situation, the safety of its troops and its efforts to prevent supplies from “falling into the hands” of Hamas. , the Islamist militant group. that controls Gaza. Israel launched its attack on Gaza following the Hamas-led attack on October 7 in which Israeli officials say at least 1,200 people were killed and another 240 were returned to Gaza as hostages.
Since then, Israeli attacks, often using US-supplied bombs, have killed more than 23,000 people in Gaza, according to Gaza health authorities. According to the UN, at least 1.9 million people, or 85 percent of the population, have been forced to leave their homes.
Despite growing global criticism and calls from the Biden administration to be more careful, the pace of Israeli attacks has not slowed.
Israeli shelling is intensifying even in areas where Palestinians had been ordered to flee for their own safety, Griffiths said.
An attack on Friday on a house in Rafah, near the southern tip of Gaza, killed 10 people, including several children, Palestinian media reported. At least 700,000 Palestinians have fled to the area around Rafah, along the border with Egypt, in the hope of finding safety. Even there it is difficult to reach.
“There is no safe place in Gaza,” Griffiths said. “A decent human life is almost impossible.”
Large protests were expected around the world on Saturday in cities including London, Dublin, Washington, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta to call for an end to the Israeli attack on Gaza, linked to the 100th day of the war.
In Israel, however, attention was focused on the 136 hostages believed to still be held in Gaza. Families and supporters of those captured on October 7 planned to hold a night vigil in Tel Aviv on Saturday night. Among the hostages are a dozen people between 70 and 80 years old and a 1-year-old baby. Frustrated relatives have increasingly criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to free them.
Like Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis have received support, funding and weapons from Iran for many years. US officials say Iran provided intelligence used by Houthis target ships 28 times in the Red Sea since mid-November, causing more than 2,000 ships to be diverted to a much longer route around Africa.
The Houthi response so far to Friday’s US and British airstrikes, which were supported by Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands, has been minimal: a single missile landed in the Red Sea about 500 meters from a ship passing on Friday. Maritime security company Ambrey identified the ship as A Panama-flagged tanker carrying Russian oil. – an apparent mistake, since Russia, an ally of Iran, had denounced the US-led attacks against the Houthis.
Even so, the impact of the crisis on global trade is already being felt. In a podcast on Friday after the Western attacks, Lloyd’s List Intelligence, a shipping data company, said it was seeing an increasing number of container ships diverting to an alternative route around the Cape of Good Hope, which typically totals 10 days and around 3,300 nautical miles. to the trip.
Tesla and Volvo said they would be forced to suspend production at some car plants in Europe, while Ikea warned that some supplies could run out.
Many Yemen experts were skeptical that this round of U.S. strikes would force the Houthis to back down and said the group could even grow stronger. Since 2014, the Houthis have endured intense bombing by US-armed Saudi warplanes, only to emerge as the de facto government in northern Yemen.
A confrontation with the United States strengthens the Houthis’ ties with Iran, galvanizes popular sympathies toward the Palestinians and could help stifle dissent, experts say: As an uneasy peace has taken root in Yemen over the past 18 months, Its economic failures have become more evident and internal opposition has increased.
The Houthis, for their part, warned that more attacks on Red Sea shipping were coming, as well as a stronger response to the United States.
“Washington will deeply regret its provocative practices in the Red and Arabian Seas, as will all those who engage in them,” Hezam al-Assad, a member of the Houthi political bureau, said in a telephone interview after the latest US attack.
The only way for the United States to stop Houthi attacks on shipping, he said, was “the end of the war in Gaza.”
Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting from New York, Roni Caryn Rabin and Patrick Kingsley of Jerusalem, and Anushka Patil From london.
