REBEL SPOKESMAN: HOUTHI MISSILES CAN HIT COVERT ISRAELI BASES IN ERITREA

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   Latest Iranian threat: Drones in Yemen
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   Yemen’s humanitarian disaster accelerates amid international indifference

BY ANNA AHRONHEIM

 

 OCTOBER 1, 2017 12:07

 

Military spokesman warns Iranian-backed rebels will soon have missiles capable of reaching bases in Israel.

2 minute read.

 

Houthi fighters ride on the back of trucks as they take part in a parade in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, Yemen August 24, 2017. The placards read: "Allah is the greatest. Death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews, victory to Islam.". (photo credit:REUTERS)

A spokesperson for Yemeni rebels accused Israel of taking part in the Saudi Arabia-led coalition against Yemen and warned that Israeli military bases in Africa are within range of Houthi missiles.

Colonel Aziz Rashid, military spokesman for the Houthis, was quoted by Al Masirah, a news outlet tied to the armed group, warning that his forces would soon have missiles capable of reaching bases in Israel itself.

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"In the event that the military situation develops, all possibilities will be considered," he said.

While Israel is not recognized by Saudi Arabia, Riyadh and Jerusalem have shared interests in curbing the expanding role of their mutual enemy Iran across the region. Relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia are at their worst in years with both accusing the other of subverting regional security.

Israel for its part has continued to warn of the growing presence of Iranian militias on its northern border.

Israel established diplomatic relations with Eritrea in early 1993 and assisted in the Eritrean war of independence. A 2012 report by intelligence group Stratfor uncovered Israeli naval bases in Eritrea’s Dahlk archipelago and Massawa along with a listening post in Amba Soira.

These docks were previously reported as being used by submarines and ships taking part in the ongoing covert war against Iranian networks smuggling weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah through the Red Sea and then to Sudan and Egypt.

Iran, which arms the Houthis, was also reported by Stratfor to have a military installation in Assab, Eritrea. Tehran is reported to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars supporting the Houthi rebels including having sent Hezbollah militants to the war-torn country to train the rebels.

Saudi air strike blast Yemen arms depot

Saudi air strike blast Yemen arms depot

Saudi air strike destroys Yemen missile base

In early July, the head of the IDF Intelligence Directorate Major General Herzi Halevi confirmed reports that Hezbollah operates and manages two underground weapons factories in Lebanon set up by the IRGC in response to alleged Israeli strikes against weapons convoys in Syria.

Israel also believes that Iran has begun to build similar factories in Yemen and according to Iran's semiofficial Tasnim News Agency, the Houthi have various homegrown missiles, including Qaher-1 which has a range of 500 kilometers as well as the Borkan-1.

The Houthis have launched several ballistic missiles into Saudi Arabia, including one which targeted Riyadh a day before US President Donald Trump visited the Kingdom in May.

Yemen has been gripped by violence since September 2014, when the Houthi rebels stormed Sanaa and forced the internationally recognized government to flee south.

The Saudi-led coalition began bombing raids on Houthi positions across Yemen in March 2015 in support of Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi and has since been accused of bombing schools, markets, hospitals and other civilian targets, killing over 10,000 people and leaving tens of thousands more injured.

The war has created a humanitarian crisis in one of the poorest countries in the Middle East, forcing aid groups to cope simultaneously with a food crisis as well as the world’s worst cholera outbreak which the International Committee of the Red Cross expects to hit 1 million cases by the end of the year.

Jerusalem Post Israel News NASRALLAH TELLS JEWS WHO MOVED TO ISRAEL TO GET OUT BEFORE NEXT WAR BEGINS

NASRALLAH TELLS JEWS WHO MOVED TO ISRAEL TO GET OUT BEFORE NEXT WAR BEGINS

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   Nasrallah warns: Hezbollah's missiles can hit Israel's nuclear reactor
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   Nasrallah threatens to 'take care of Israeli violations' should Hezbollah not be backed

BY REUTERS, ANNA AHRONHEIM, HERB KEINON

 

 OCTOBER 1, 2017 13:30

 

The Hezbollah leader accused Israel of pushing the region into war.

4 minute read.

 

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah speaks to supporters on a screen. (photo credit:HASSAN ABDALLAH / REUTERS)

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government on Sunday of pushing the region to war in Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, and said nowhere in Israel would be safe if such a conflict were to erupt.

With Hezbollah actively fighting in Syria and Israel concerned that it, along with its patron Iran, will try to establish a permanent presence there, tensions between Israel and the terrorist organization have risen this year.

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In a speech to followers, Nasrallah said the Israeli government did not have “a correct assessment of where this war will lead if they ignite it,” and did not know how it would end.

“They do not have a correct picture about what is awaiting them if they go to the idiocy of this war,” Nasrallah said.

Israel does not know where such a conflict would be fought, or who would take part, he added.

Netanyahu answers Nasrallah: We will aggressively retaliate to any attack

Netanyahu answers Hezbollah chief Nasrallah: We will aggressively retaliate to any attack

According to Nasrallah, “Even the Zionist entity acknowledges that Hezbollah is the second army in the region, so we are not talking out of weakness. I call upon political parties not to be driven through incitement for such adventure because the outcome of such confrontation is well known.”

Formed in the 1980s with the help of Iran as a resistance group against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, Hezbollah has since morphed into a army-like organization having battalions and brigades with thousands of battle-hardened fighters and advanced weaponry spread across the Middle East.

Nasrallah said earlier this year that a future Israeli war against Syria or Lebanon could draw thousands of fighters from countries such as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Pakistan, and could take place inside Israel.

In his speech Sunday, he called on Jews who immigrated to Israel to “leave and return to the countries from which they came so they are not fuel for any war that the idiotic Netanyahu government takes them to.”

Were war to erupt, he said, they might not have long to leave. “They will have no secure place in occupied Palestine,” he said.

Nasrallah also said that the Shi’ite Lebanese terrorist group wouldn’t remain silent on the continued Israeli “threats to Lebanon” and its “continued aggression in Syria under the banner of preventing the resistance from obtaining military capabilities.”

Israel has hit at least 100 Hezbollah targets, believed to be arms convoys headed to the group in Lebanon or weapons depots in Syria over the past five years. 

“Israeli spying devices which have been recently uncovered are a dangerous threat to Lebanon,” he said, adding, “We will not abandon our country; if this issue is not politically solved then we will deal with it.”

Housing and Construction Minister Yoav Gallant (Kulanu) responded to Nasrallah, saying that he was a “marked man,” and that Israel would “take off the gloves” in the next confrontation with Hezbollah.

“Nasrallah speaks from his bunker, and he has good reasons to do so,” said Gallant, a former general. “If he makes a mistake and starts a war, we will send Lebanon back to the Stone Age.”

Following similar threats by Nasrallah in February, Intelligence Minister Israel Katz said that if Nasrallah dared to fire at Israel’s home front or attack its national infrastructure, “all of Lebanon will be hit.”

And in July, former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon told a Saudi website that if Iran – which controls Hezbollah – drags it and Lebanon into a war with Israel, “every Lebanese [person] will suffer from the next war because all infrastructure will be destroyed.”

Nasrallah was speaking on Sunday on the occasion of Ashura, when Shi’ites commemorate the slaying of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, the Imam Hussein, at Kerbala in 680.

Netanyahu said in August that Iran was building sites to produce precision-guided missiles in Syria and Lebanon, with the aim of using them against Israel.

Tens of thousands of Shi’ites wearing mourning black marched through the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut to commemorate Ashura, when Hezbollah rallies supporters around its political causes.

Men with boxes of tissues weaved through the crowds, handing them to those weeping in mourning.

“All of these crowds are answering Nasrallah’s call, Hussein’s call, saying we are ready to give our selves and souls and blood and children and all we own in sacrifice to this religion,” said Deeb Hussein al-Annan, whose son was killed fighting for Hezbollah in Syria in 2014.

“We are defending the cause and our existence [in Syria],” he added, holding a flag emblazoned with a picture of his son.

The group’s role in Syria is the focus of controversy in Lebanon. Hezbollah’s opponents say it has dragged Lebanon into the conflict. Hezbollah says it has stopped extremist groups such as Islamic State from advancing into Lebanon from Syria.

Nasrallah said the battle against Islamic State must continue “in every place to eliminate Daesh,” using an Arabic acronym for the group.

POPE FRANCIS WEARS REFUGEE ID BRACELET IN APPEAL FOR HELP FOR MIGRANTS

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   Feel the pain of the poor and immigrants, Pope Francis says
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   Pope Francis likens migrant holding centers to 'concentration camps'

BY REUTERS

 

 OCTOBER 1, 2017 14:24

 

"If we look on our neighbors without mercy we risk that even God will look on us without mercy."

2 minute read.

 

Pope Francis waves as he arrives to lead his Wednesday general audience in Saint Peter's square at the Vatican June 28, 2017.. (photo credit:REUTERS)

BOLOGNA, Italy - Pope Francis on Sunday urged governments and people to do more to help migrants and not see them as enemies, wearing a plastic ID bracelet used by asylum seekers to drive home his message.

Francis visited a drab refugee center on the outskirts of Bologna known simply as "The Hub." Run by a charity, it is home to about 1,000 asylum seekers, most of whom risked their lives crossing the Mediterranean from Africa and the Middle East.

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There, they live in gray containers and other forms of temporary housing while awaiting decisions on their asylum requests to be moved to other towns in Italy.

Many of the refugees and migrants are without documents and all wear a plastic yellow bracelet. The pope wore one bearing his name and the number 3900003 on his right wrist. It was given to him by an African refugee.

"Many who don't know you are afraid of you," he told them as a light drizzle fell. "That makes them think they have the right to judge (you) coldly and harshly," he said.

He paid homage to those who "never arrived because they were eaten up by the desert or the sea."

Some 600,000 impoverished migrants and refugees have arrived in Italy in less than four years. In that time, more than 13,000 have died trying to cross the Mediterranean.

Francis, who has made defense of migrants and refugees a major plank of his papacy, also condemned internet trolling against foreigners, saying they had been subjected to "terrible phrases and insults."

"If we look on our neighbors without mercy we risk that even God will look on us without mercy," he said.

The pope's defense of migrants, his second in less than a week, comes at a time of growing anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States and many European countries where far-right parties have made inroads.

Last week, the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (Afd) party surged to third place in a national election, tapping into public disquiet over the arrival of more than a million migrants in Germany over the past two years.

Francis called on more governments to facilitate initiatives backed by the private sector and community groups to set up "humanitarian corridors for refugees in the most difficult situations."

This was a reference to programs such as one run in Italy by the Rome-based Sant' Egidio peace community, which regularly brings into Italy refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria.

Italy's anti-immigrant Northern League, whose base is in the regions just north of Bologna, has vowed to clamp down on migration from developing countries if it forms part of a coalition government after next year's elections.

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• EU Refugee Crisis

 

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