Israel carries out new airstrikes in Yemen, military says

Israel’s military says it carried out new airstrikes in Yemen against what it said were Houthi terrorist targets. Its statement Friday said fighter jets struck “on the western coast and inland Yemen,” a day after the Houthis launched three drones at Israel. The U.S. military bombed Yemen earlier this week.

Houthi-controlled media reported one worker dead and six people wounded at the Ras Isa port. The Houthis said the strikes occurred while Yemenis were rallying in the capital Sanaa in support of the Palestinians in Gaza.

In recent weeks, Israel and Hamas have appeared to inch closer to an agreement for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages.

The war began when Hamas-led terrorists stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and abducting around 250. A third of the 100 hostages still held in Gaza are believed to be dead.

The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said Thursday that 46,006 Palestinians have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war, with no end in sight. The ministry does not say how many of the dead were fighters or civilians.

The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 terrorists. It blames Hamas for civilian deaths because it says terrorists operate in residential areas.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Friday with security officials to discuss Gaza ceasefire talks, an Israeli official told The Associated Press.

The prime minister and security officials received an update from negotiators and instructed them to continue the talks in Qatar, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a confidential diplomatic matter.

Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been mediating the indirect talks that have stalled repeatedly during 15 months of war. Just one brief ceasefire has been achieved, occurring in the earliest weeks of the fighting.

Meanwhile, an oil tanker that burned for weeks in the Red Sea after being attacked by Yemen’s Houthi terrorists and threatening a massive oil spill has been salvaged, a security firm said Friday.

The MV Sounion tanker had been a disaster-in-waiting in the waterway, with 1 million barrels of crude oil aboard that had been struck and later sabotaged with explosives by the Houthis.

It took months for salvagers to tow the Sounion away, extinguish the fires and offload the remaining crude oil.

“Over three challenging weeks, the fires were extinguished, cargo tanks patched and pressurised with inert gas, and the vessel declared safe,” said private security firm Ambrey, which helped lead the response alongside a European naval force and salvagers. “In early October, she was towed north to Suez for removal of her cargo, which has now been successfully completed.”

The State Department had warned that a spill from the Sounion would have been “four times the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster” in 1989 off Alaska.