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More than 500 people have died over the past eight days in southern Yemen's main city, Aden, many with breathing difficulties, city officials say, raising fears the coronavirus is spreading out of control, feeding off a civil war that has left the country in ruins. One gravedigger told The Associated Press he'd never seen such a constant flow of dead — in a city that has seen multiple bouts of bloody street battles during more than five years of war. Condolence messages for deaths in Aden have streamed out on Twitter and other social media for...
ADEN, Yemen (AP) — Yemen's main southern city of Aden was shaken by double attacks Thursday, as a missile fired by rebels hit a military parade and suicide bombers blasted a police station. At least 51 people were killed in the deadliest day in nearly two years in the de facto capital of the U.S.- and Saudi-backed side in Yemen's civil war. Most of the dead came from the missile strike, which slammed into a parade of newly graduated fighters belonging to a militia loyal to the United Arab Emirates, known as the Security Belt. Among the dead w...
CAIRO (AP) — A boat from Libya carrying 86 migrants sank in the Mediterranean and left only three survivors, authorities said Thursday, after an airstrike on a detention center near the Libyan capital killed dozens of others. The twin tragedies illustrate the almost unthinkable choice facing those who have reached the North Africa coast while seeking a better life in Europe: Risk a hazardous sea voyage in a flimsy, rubber-sided boat, or face being crammed into a detention center, where some of the migrants say they have been forced to a...
CAIRO (AP) — Sudan's military overthrew President Omar al-Bashir on Thursday after months of bloody protests against his repressive 30-year rule. But pro-democracy demonstrators vowed to keep up their campaign in the streets after the military said it would govern the country for the next two years. Al-Bashir's fall came a week after Algeria's long-ruling, military-backed president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, was driven from power. Together, the developments echoed the Arab Spring uprisings eight years ago that brought down autocrats across the M...
VALLETTA, Malta (AP) — African migrants who hijacked an oil tanker after it rescued them in the Mediterranean Sea seized metal objects and began smashing the ship and threatening crew members after they realized they were being returned to Libya, the ship's captain said Friday. Nader el-Hiblu, the 42-year-old Libyan captain of the El Hiblu 1 ship, said he and five other crew members feared they could be killed during the "horror" that played out at sea this week. He said the threats by rioting migrants forced him to agree to their demand that h...
TAIZ, Yemen (AP) — Day after day Nabil al-Hakimi, a humanitarian official in Taiz, one of Yemen's largest cities, went to work feeling he had a "mountain" on his shoulders. Billions of dollars in food and other foreign aid was coming into his war-ravaged homeland, but millions of Yemenis were still living a step away from famine. Reports of organizational disarray and out-and-out thievery streamed in to him this spring and summer from around Taiz — 5,000 sacks of rice doled out without record of where they'd gone . . . 705 food baskets loo...
CAIRO (AP) — A prominent Yemeni rights group has documented heavy damage from ground fighting and airstrikes to at least 34 archaeological sites over the past four years and urged the international community to protect Yemenis' "collective memory." In a lengthy report titled "The Degradation of History" released Thursday, Yemen's Mawatana Organization for Human Rights collected the testimonies of over 75 people working at archaeological sites and monuments that came under attack. The sites are located in nine governorates including the c...
ATAQ, Yemen (AP) — Al-Qaida was giving away motorcycles up in the mountains — that's what the kids in town were saying the day Abdullah disappeared. Early that morning, Mohsanaa Salem woke her 14-year-old son to go buy vegetables. The sun had just risen above the mountain ridge, and winter light filled the ravine where their mud brick house sat at the foot of a slope. "Let me sleep," Abdullah groaned from a mattress on the floor, surrounded by his brothers and sisters. One word from his father, though, and the boy was up and dressed, tru...
CAIRO (AP) — In a remote pocket of northern Yemen, many families with starving children have nothing to eat but the leaves of a local vine, boiled into a sour, acidic green paste. International aid agencies have been caught off guard by the extent of the suffering there as parents and children waste away. The main health center in Aslam district was flooded with dozens of emaciated children during a recent visit by the Associated Press. Excruciatingly thin toddlers, eyes bulging, sat in a plastic washtub used in a make-shift scale as nurses wei...
ADEN, Yemen (AP) — The young mother stepped onto the scale for the doctor. Even with all her black robes on, she weighed only 84 pounds — 38 kilograms. Umm Mizrah is pregnant, but starving herself to feed her children. And her sacrifice may not be enough to save them. The doctor's office is covered with dozens of pictures of emaciated babies who have come through Al-Sadaqa Hospital in Aden, casualties of a three-year war in Yemen that has left millions of people on the edge of famine. Mothers like Umm Mizrah are often the only defense aga...
SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Heavy airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition rocked Yemen's capital Tuesday, striking Sanaa's densely populated neighborhoods in apparent retaliation for the killing of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh by the Shiite rebels who control the city. Residents reported heavy bombing, and a U.N. official said at least 25 airstrikes hit the city over the past 24 hours. The Saudi-led coalition battling the rebels had thrown its support behind Saleh just hours before his death, as the longtime strongman's alliance with the rebels u...
ISMAILIA, Egypt (AP) — They arrived in five SUVs, took positions across from the mosque's door and windows, and just as the imam was about to deliver his Friday sermon from atop the pulpit, they opened fire and tossed grenades at the estimated 500 worshippers inside. When the violence finally stopped, more than 300 people, including 27 children, had been killed and 128 injured. As the gunfire rang out and the blasts shook the mosque, worshippers screamed and cried out in pain. A stampede broke out in the rush toward a door leading to the washro...
CAIRO (AP) — An international rights group says Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has given a "green light" to systematic torture inside detention facilities, allowing officers to act with "almost total impunity." In a 63-page report released Wednesday, Human Rights Watch says el-Sissi, a U.S. ally who was warmly received at the White House earlier this year, is pursuing stability "at any cost," and has allowed the widespread torture of detainees despite it being outlawed by the Egyptian constitution. El-Sissi "has effectively given p...
ABS, Yemen (AP) — The taxi driver happened to pass by just after a volley of airstrikes hit a highway in western Yemen. The driver, Mohammed al-Khal, stopped, took a wounded ice cream vendor into his car and rushed him to the nearest hospital. But the warplanes were still hunting. Moments after al-Khal pulled up at the hospital in the town of Abs, hell was unleashed. A missile struck just outside the hospital entrance, "like a ball of fire," one witness said. Al-Khal, a father of eight, was incinerated in his car. The blast ripped through p...
