Yemen’s Houthis give Israel four-day deadline to lift Gaza aid blockage

NAIROBI: A United Nations helicopter attempting to evacuate South Sudanese troops came under fire in the northern town of Nasir on Friday, the UN mission there said, resulting in the death of a crew member and several soldiers including a general.
The UN crew was trying to airlift soldiers following heavy clashes in Nasir between national forces and the White Army militia, a group which President Salva Kiir’s government has linked to forces loyal to his rival and First Vice President Riek Machar.
“The attack... is utterly abhorrent and may constitute a war crime under international law,” said the head of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), Nicholas Haysom.
“We also regret the killing of those that we were attempting to extract, particularly when assurances of safe passage had been received. UNMISS urges an investigation to determine those responsible and hold them accountable.”
Calls to the government’s spokesperson, Information Minister Michael Makuei, were not answered. But Kiir’s office said the president would make an address to the nation on Friday afternoon.
The White Army, mostly from the Nuer ethnic group, fought alongside Machar’s forces in the 2013-2018 civil war that pitted them against predominantly ethnic Dinka troops loyal to Kiir.
Machar’s spokesperson this week said security forces had arrested the petroleum minister, the peacebuilding minister, the deputy head of the army and other senior military officials allied with Machar, raising fears for the country’s fragile peace process.
The government has not commented on the detentions and Machar’s party has denied involvement in the fighting in Nasir.

DAMASCUS: Security forces battled for a second day on Friday to crush a nascent insurgency by fighters from Bashar Assad’s Alawite sect in western Syria, with scores reported killed as the Islamist-led government faced the biggest challenge yet to its authority.
Syrian Arab Republic authorities said remnants of the ousted Assad regime launched a deadly and well-planned attack on their forces on Thursday in the coastal region which is heavily populated by the members of the Alawite minority.
Authorities have not issued a death toll, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 120 people had been killed. Reuters could not independently verify the toll.
The violence has shaken interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa’s efforts to consolidate control as his administration struggles to get US sanctions lifted and grapples with wider security challenges, notably in the southwest where Israel has said it will prevent Damascus deploying forces.
Thursday’s violence was largely focused in the Jableh area but the unrest spread more widely. Curfews were declared in the coastal cities of Tartous and Latakia, state news agency SANA said. Security forces launched combing operations in both cities and nearby mountains, it said, citing a security source.
Civilians were advised to stay at home, it said.
A resident of Latakia city reached by phone said clashes had been going on there for 12 hours. Government reinforcements had arrived in the city, he said. A resident of Tartous city said heavy gunfire was heard as government forces entered the city on Friday morning and began firing into the air.
A security source said reinforcements had managed to enter Latakia city on Friday morning, having been unable to on Thursday because the road had been cut.
Clashes were continuing on the city’s outskirts, security forces were working to open the road to Jableh, which had also been cut, and Assad-linked militias were surrounding a number of positions in Jableh, the source said.

VIOLENCE AND ATTACKS
Alawite activists say their community has been subjected to violence and attacks since Assad fell, particularly in rural Homs and Latakia.
While Sharaa has pledged to run Syria in an inclusive way, no meetings have been declared between him and senior Alawite figures, in contrast to members of other minority groups such as the Kurds, Christians and Druze.
The Assad-led government recruited heavily from the Alawite community for the security apparatus and bureaucracy of the Syrian state, which the Islamist-led authorities are seeking to remake, including through mass sackings.
While Sharaa has brought much of Sunni Muslim majority Syria under the sway of Damascus, important areas remain outside its grasp, including the northeast and east which are controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
A statement by a grouping of Alawite clerics, the Alawite Islamic Council, laid blame for the violence on the government, saying “military convoys had been sent into the coast with the pretext of ‘regime remnants’ to terrorize and kill Syrians.” It called for the coastal region to be put under UN protection.
Saudi Arabia, which has offered diplomatic backing to Sharaa’s administration, condemned “crimes being undertaken by outlaw groups” in Syria and their targeting of security forces. Riyadh “stands alongside” the Syria government in its efforts to preserve security and civil peace, it said in a statement.