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Since the start of September, the resurgent military conflict between the Saudi-led coalition and Yemen’s Houthi movement has pushed at least 130,000 Yemenis to flee their homes, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) cautioned in an official statement released Tuesday.

Intensive Saudi airstrikes paired with persistent frontline clashes between Houthi forces (officially Ansar Allah) and Yemen’s internationally recognized government have triggered widespread population displacement across western and central regions of the war-torn country.

For the month of September alone, UNHCR confirmed at least 110 civilian casualties, including 28 fatalities, emphasizing that non-combatants continue to absorb the worst harm from the nearly decade-long conflict. The agency identified the southwestern governorate of Taiz as the current epicenter of the crisis, where more than 60 percent of the newly recorded displacement has occurred. Thousands of families remain trapped in active combat zones there, cut off from emergency aid and safe passage out.

Displacement has also been documented in the northern and central governorates of Al Jawf, Marib, and Al Hodeidah, a pattern that underscores the expanding, multi-front scope of the renewed fighting, UNHCR added.

On the same day of the UN warning, Yemeni government forces announced that the Saudi coalition had conducted new airstrikes targeting Houthi military positions and weapons storage facilities west of Taiz. Just hours after that announcement, Saudi civil defence authorities issued an urgent alert for the Najran region along the Saudi-Yemen border, warning of an imminent incoming Houthi strike. No casualties were ultimately reported in the incident, and local authorities urged residents to stay indoors, avoid public gatherings and refrain from filming attack sites to comply with safety protocols.

In an interview with Saudi-based newspaper Okaz, Yemeni Prime Minister Shaya al-Zindani, who leads the internationally recognized government, acknowledged that the Houthi seizure of the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait — a critical global shipping chokepoint connecting the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden — has created an extremely high-risk situation, but pushed back against claims it represents a final defeat for pro-government forces. He added that Saudi-backed pro-government troops are currently reorganizing their frontline deployments and boosting combat readiness to retake territory lost to recent Houthi advances.

Active artillery duels and ground clashes have also been confirmed in Al Jawf and Marib. Roughly 3,000 displaced people have arrived in Marib city, located around 120 kilometers east of the Houthi-held capital Sanaa, after fleeing escalating violence in surrounding areas.

Zindani’s Ministry of Human Rights has accused Houthi forces of deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure: specifically, the Bab al-Mandab Commercial Complex in Lahj governorate. According to the ministry, the busy public market was struck by two ballistic missiles fired an hour apart, during midday hours when crowds of shoppers and passersby are typically present.

As military operations intensify across the country, the already catastrophic humanitarian situation in Yemen is deteriorating at an alarming rate. Carl Skau, acting executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP), warned that widespread hunger is spreading rapidly across the country, with civilians left unable to access adequate food or basic healthcare. Tens of thousands of newly displaced people are arriving at overcrowded, resource-stretched refugee camps with no personal belongings or access to basic support, Skau added.

Yemen relies on imports for roughly 90 percent of its total food supply, leaving the vast majority of the population extremely vulnerable to port closures and supply chain disruptions caused by ongoing fighting. Currently, more than 18 million Yemenis — nearly half of the country’s total population — face acute food insecurity, and approximately 2.2 million children under the age of five suffer from life-threatening acute malnutrition.

Escalating regional tensions in Yemen have prompted the United Kingdom to announce new military support for Saudi Arabia, as Houthi forces make rapid territorial gains and step up cross-border attacks on the kingdom. The latest round of fighting, which resumed earlier this month after a period of relative calm, has created a rapidly shifting security landscape, with the UK stepping in to answer a Saudi request for assistance.

UK Defence Secretary Luke Pollard confirmed that the Royal Air Force will deploy a Voyager air-to-air refueling aircraft, operating from the UK’s military base in Cyprus, to support Saudi air operations. Speaking to Sky News, Pollard framed the decision as critical to British national interests, stating, “We’re doing it for national security reasons in support of our own national security. In dangerous times, good friends stand together.”

Pollard emphasized that the UK’s military backing would adhere fully to international humanitarian law, while a Ministry of Defence statement clarified that the deployment is intended to support Saudi defensive operations and back Yemen’s internationally recognized legitimate government. The statement added that the Houthis pose a significant threat to Middle East regional stability, and checking their advance aligns with the UK’s core national security and economic interests. This air support deployment follows the earlier movement of UK air defense equipment and military personnel to Saudi Arabia in recent weeks.

The Houthi advance has been swift: the group has seized large swathes of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline in a lightning offensive, giving it control over the strategically vital Bab al-Mandab strait, a key chokepoint for global oil shipping. In response to the decade-long Saudi blockade of Yemen, the Houthis have stepped up drone and missile attacks on Saudi cities, oil infrastructure, and Red Sea commercial shipping. The group has offered to halt all attacks on Saudi territory and Red Sea oil exports in exchange for an end to the blockade.

The resumption of fighting has triggered a severe humanitarian displacement crisis, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) confirmed this week. UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch announced at a Geneva press briefing that more than 130,000 people have been displaced within Yemen since fighting resumed in early September, and an additional 3,000 have fled across the border to Djibouti. In the coming months, these numbers are projected to rise to 230,000 displaced people inside Yemen and 10,000 refugees in Djibouti, all of whom will require urgent life-saving humanitarian assistance, per UNHCR projections.

Despite increased intelligence and targeting support from the United States for Saudi forces, multiple US sources told CNN that Riyadh has still been unable to reverse Houthi territorial gains. Anonymous US officials told the network that American intelligence has warned for months that the Houthis could attempt to close off this key commercial shipping waterway, echoing Iran’s earlier closure of another critical strategic waterway this year. Despite a decade of Saudi claims that it has effectively trained Yemeni pro-government forces to combat the Houthis, US intelligence assessments still conclude that Saudi-led forces lack the capability to push back the Houthi offensive.

The UK’s long-standing support for Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen has long been controversial. The original 2015 Saudi-led air intervention into Yemen sparked a war that has killed more than 150,000 people to date, drawing widespread international criticism over civilian casualties and humanitarian harm.

One week after rescuers pulled seven-year-old Abdulrahman Azzam from the concrete rubble of a collapsed multi-story building in northern Gaza, the young boy still carries the crippling psychological scars of the disaster. His father Iyad recounts that the child still instinctively reaches out to shield his mother’s pregnant belly when he fears danger, only to be jolted back to the brutal reality that she is gone forever. Every day, Abdulrahman re-experiences the pre-dawn collapse that crushed the building around him, his mother, and his siblings, leaving only him and his 9-year-old sister Ferial as survivors after hours trapped under debris.

Islam Azzam, Iyad’s 7-month-pregnant wife, and their 3-year-old son Rizq were among the 21 people killed in the collapse – 12 of whom were children. Another 45 people were pulled from the wreckage with life-altering injuries. For the Azzam family, the tragedy is the latest in a years-long cycle of displacement and loss sparked by the Israeli military campaign in Gaza that began in October 2023.

Originally from Gaza City’s Shuja’iyya neighbourhood, the Azzam family had already been forced to flee their home multiple times after it was destroyed in an Israeli strike. After a ceasefire was announced in October 2025, they set up a makeshift tent on a patch of tiled ground near the rubble of Gaza’s Legislative Council building. Heavy rain turned the tent into an uninhabitable flood zone, with water pooling under their bedding and soaking all their belongings. With winter approaching and his wife pregnant, Iyad encouraged Islam to take the children to stay with her family in their damaged fourth-floor apartment in the six-story Saada Building – whose name translates to “Happiness” in Arabic – to wait out the storm. Iyad remained behind in the family tent, never imagining the trip would be fatal.

The Saada Building had already been heavily damaged by Israeli strikes in 2023, and observers had long flagged it as at high risk of collapse. Despite this, at least 70 displaced people – most of them children – had nowhere else to go after Israeli bombardment destroyed their homes, so they sought shelter within its unstable walls. Iyad explained that there is simply no available vacant land in Gaza to set up new tents, leaving displaced families with no alternative to occupying damaged, unsafe structures. This risk is not hypothetical: last winter, at least eight children – most of them infants living in makeshift tents – died of hypothermia as freezing temperatures swept through the strip.

Islam was supposed to celebrate her birthday the day after the collapse, and the couple were just two months away from welcoming their fourth child, a son they had already named Muhib, and had even bought newborn clothes for. Eyewitnesses recount that the entire building caved in in less than 10 seconds around 3:30 a.m. When a friend came to fetch Iyad at his tent, he immediately sensed disaster. Arriving at the site, he found the entire building reduced to a pile of rubble. When he told Civil Defence workers his wife’s family name, they broke the news: only Abdulrahman and Ferial had been pulled alive.

“ I couldn’t fathom what was happening. My wife was due to give birth to our youngest baby boy in just two months. We had chosen the name Muhib for him, and we had already bought his clothes,” Iyad told Middle East Eye.

Ferial survived with a serious head injury, while Abdulrahman suffered broken bones in his arm and leg. But their physical wounds pale in comparison to the long-term psychological trauma the children now live with. Before the building gave way, Abdulrahman woke up and felt the ceiling shifting. He immediately threw his arm over his mother’s pregnant belly to protect her, before concrete collapsed onto his body. Now, he wakes screaming multiple times a night, his arm still raised in that same protective position, reliving the disaster over and over.

Ferial has barely spoken of her ordeal. The Civil Defence rescuer who pulled her out later told Iyad that the extraction was so dangerous he ended up trapped alongside her while digging with his bare hands to reach her. Circulated online video footage captures the 9-year-old begging rescuers to save her, saying “I can’t [hold on]. Forgive me, uncle. Oh God, please don’t let me die, because I want grandma to stay alive.”

Iyad tries to distract his children, joke with them, and talk through their grief, but he acknowledges he is broken himself. “They suddenly withdraw and go to the place where their mother used to sit and teach them the Quran, or they hold her belongings and start crying. Yesterday, I found Abdulrahman arranging her things and saying, ‘Mom liked to put this here,’” he said. “I look at them, and I don’t know what to do. Do I comfort them when I’m the one who needs comforting? I don’t know what to do.”

Despite the loss, Iyad does not blame his in-laws or other displaced families for taking shelter in the Saada Building. His father-in-law, who also died in the collapse, had already lost one son to the war and had another missing for more than a year and a half, leaving him with no resources to find safer shelter. “He searched extensively for a place where he could protect his daughters, but he couldn’t find anywhere, so he was forced to live in that building,” Iyad explained.

The collapse of the Saada Building is not an isolated tragedy. UN data estimates that Israeli military action has damaged or destroyed roughly 90 percent of all housing units in Gaza since the start of the conflict in 2023. Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents have been internally displaced, and a recent Shelter Cluster report led by the Norwegian Refugee Council found that 1.98 million Palestinians – 94 percent of Gaza’s population – still need emergency shelter and basic household assistance. Since the war began, at least 61 Palestinians have been killed in building collapses across the territory, with the 21 Saada victims added to that toll.

Palestinian Civil Defence data shows that more than 2,000 damaged buildings across Gaza are at immediate risk of collapse and require urgent intervention or demolition. In Khan Younis alone, 474 structures are marked for demolition, 330 of which need full removal. With winter approaching, emergency officials warn that heavy rain and strong winds will trigger more collapses, but Israel continues to ban the entry of heavy machinery and equipment required to demolish unsafe structures and clear rubble – a commitment it agreed to under the October 2025 ceasefire agreement.

“Winter is approaching, and we are increasingly worried about the buildings that remain damaged and unstable,” said Abdullah al-Majdalawi, Civil Defence director of public relations and media. “The heavy rain and strong winds could cause many buildings to collapse. We need to remove these structures before the weather gets worse, but the Israeli occupation still completely bans heavy machinery and equipment required for this work. Every day that these buildings remain standing is another day that people are exposed to this danger. Israel is literally turning these buildings into graves for the displaced.”

Nearly five years after the coordinated suicide bombings that shattered Sri Lanka’s Easter celebrations and left the nation reeling, the country’s High Court has delivered a long-awaited guilty verdict for 15 men charged with orchestrating the 2019 attacks that killed 270 people and wounded over 500 more. Among those convicted is Naufer Moulavi, identified by prosecutors as the primary mastermind behind the simultaneous bombings that targeted three Christian churches and three high-end luxury hotels across the island. Nine other defendants facing related charges were acquitted in the ruling. The 2019 attacks remain the deadliest act of violence Sri Lanka has faced since the conclusion of its 26-year civil war in 2009, and the death toll included 45 foreign nationals visiting the country for the holiday.

All nine suicide bombers who carried out the blasts died at the attack sites. Investigations have long pinned responsibility for the coordinated operation on domestic Islamist extremist networks, and all 25 individuals originally indicted in the case were members of Sri Lanka’s Muslim minority community. One of the indicted defendants died while in custody before the trial concluded. The 24 accused who stood trial faced a total of more than 23,000 criminal charges, ranging from murder and conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism to illegal possession of firearms and explosive materials.

The prosecution’s case rested on an unprecedented volume of evidence and testimony: more than 2,300 witnesses gave evidence for the state, and prosecutors presented 2,076 pieces of material evidence, including unused explosives, bladed weapons, and firearms recovered from extremist safe houses. In the immediate aftermath of the 2019 attacks, Sri Lankan officials acknowledged catastrophic institutional failures, admitting that a “major intelligence lapse” allowed the plot to proceed undetected. It was later revealed that a detailed tip-off about the planned attacks shared by Indian intelligence agencies was never properly disseminated to frontline security and law enforcement authorities.

Legal consequences for institutional failures tied to the attacks have unfolded in parallel to the conspiracy trial. In 2023, Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court ruled that former president Maithripala Sirisena bore personal responsibility for the national security failures that enabled the bombings, ordering him to pay millions of rupees in compensation to attack victims and their families. Just last month, two former senior security officials were sentenced to death on charges of criminal negligence linked to the attacks, though death sentences are almost always commuted to life imprisonment in Sri Lanka under a decades-long national moratorium on executions.

Monday’s conviction comes amid ongoing investigations into alleged high-level political and intelligence complicity in the attacks that have roiled Sri Lankan politics for years. A separate probe is currently active against former intelligence chief Suresh Sallay, who stands accused of coordinating the bomb plot alongside the Islamist extremist cell that carried out the attacks. Sallay, who was arrested in February this year, has repeatedly denied all accusations against him.

The claims of high-level involvement mirror allegations made in a 2023 documentary by British public broadcaster Channel 4, which featured whistleblower testimony claiming the attacks were deliberately allowed to proceed to boost the political popularity of the Rajapaksa family, a political dynasty that has dominated Sri Lankan politics for much of the last two decades. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was elected president just months after the 2019 attacks running on a hardline platform of cracking down on Islamist extremism, has also denied all allegations tying him or his family to the plot. Currently barred from leaving Sri Lanka, Rajapaksa has filed a court petition seeking to block any potential arrest connected to the ongoing investigations.

For years, survivors and family members of attack victims have held repeated, large-scale public demonstrations across Sri Lanka demanding full accountability and justice for the 2019 attacks, a movement that has pressured successive governments to deliver conclusions to the multiple probes tied to the bombings. Heavy security, including dozens of regular police officers and elite commando units, was deployed to the High Court in Colombo ahead of the verdict announcement to prevent any potential unrest tied to the ruling.

Weeks after a Palestinian rights organization filed a formal criminal complaint over alleged war crimes committed in the Gaza Strip, a second former Israeli soldier facing accusations has departed Indian territory, a legal representative close to the case has confirmed to independent outlet Middle East Eye.

The unnamed former soldier left India in mid-September, according to the lawyer. To date, no official confirmation has been provided on whether his early exit was triggered by the August complaint filed by the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), or if the departure simply aligned with the pre-planned end of his tourist visit to the country.

The revelation of the soldier’s exit comes at a sensitive diplomatic moment: New Delhi is facing mounting international criticism for its failure to open legal proceedings against Israeli nationals accused of war crimes who enter the country, even as India’s top diplomat delivered a public address calling for universal respect for international law as a foundation for functional global multilateralism.

Speaking at an official event held on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on Monday, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar stated, “Multilateralism will be best served when international law, rules and norms are scrupulously observed.”

This former soldier marks the second Israeli ex-service member accused of grave violations in Gaza to leave India shortly after HRF submitted legal complaints against him. In June, the organization filed similar allegations against Eitan Gilboa, a veteran of Israel’s 271st Combat Engineering Battalion, who was accused of involvement in the deliberate demolition of Palestinian civilian infrastructure during Israeli operations in Gaza. Within days of that complaint being registered, Gilboa also left Indian territory.

Since Israel launched its large-scale military campaign in Gaza following the October 7, 2023 cross-border attacks by Hamas, official Gaza health data records that at least 248,866 Palestinians have been killed or injured across the enclave.

In its second criminal complaint submitted to Indian authorities in mid-August, HRF laid out detailed allegations that the unnamed former soldier participated in acts classified as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide. The organization documented that the soldier had openly acknowledged his personal role in the unlawful destruction of civilian property during Israeli military operations in the Khan Younis Governorate, carried out between March and April 2024.

Satellite imagery acquired and verified by HRF shows that Israeli forces carried out widespread leveling of civilian residential structures only after they had already secured full military control over the area — an action that cannot be justified under military necessity as defined by international humanitarian law.

“The suspect and his unit carried out systematic destruction of homes and agricultural land in Gaza – conduct that undoubtedly violates international law,” Dyab Abou Jahjah, HRF’s general director, stated at the time the complaint was filed. “This second complaint filed in India is part of our commitment and duty to bring perpetrators before the courts, and India must comply with its international obligations,” Jahjah added.

The Indian federal government has faced growing international scrutiny over its consistent diplomatic and military support for Israel throughout the ongoing military campaign in Gaza. To date, New Delhi has refused to back a United Nations-advocated arms embargo on Israel, and declined to join South Africa’s landmark case accusing Israel of acts of genocide that is currently being adjudicated by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

India is also not a signatory to the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court (ICC), which means it faces no legal obligation under the statute to execute ICC arrest warrants issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

In an August 2025 investigative report, Amnesty International revealed that both Indian state-owned and private defense firms have shipped at least 2,596 separate consignments of military hardware to Israel between October 7, 2023 and November 30, 2024, totaling hundreds of thousands of arms, artillery rounds, ammunition, and critical military components used in the Gaza campaign. The documented shipments included core parts for machine guns, 155mm high-explosive artillery shells supplied to Israeli defense giant Elbit Systems, and pre-assembled explosive warheads for SkyStriker loitering “kamikaze” drones. According to Amnesty’s analysis, these shipments included hundreds of thousands of components for ordnance, small arms, and military vehicles.

In public comments made in November 2024, Minister Jaishankar reaffirmed that India’s policy on military exports would remain guided solely by New Delhi’s calculation of its own “national interest.”

Middle East Eye is an independent media outlet specializing in original, on-the-ground coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa, and surrounding global affairs.

This week, global heads of state will gather in Manhattan for the 79th United Nations General Assembly, an annual diplomatic gathering that opens against a backdrop of heightened U.S.-Iran tensions and a sprawling regional conflict across the Middle East.

U.S. President Donald Trump is set to deliver the opening major address to the assembly early Tuesday, marking his return to the UN stage one year after he announced that American military strikes had eliminated Iran’s nuclear program. Unlike his 2024 appearance, however, Trump will address a deeply skeptical international community. In recent months, Iran has responded to U.S. pressure by limiting commercial transit through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s single most important chokepoint for global energy exports, triggering widespread fears that disruption could send shockwaves through the already fragile global economy.

Tensions have spilled beyond the Persian Gulf as well. Just days ahead of the General Assembly meeting, Yemen’s Houthi movement announced it had seized large swathes of territory along the Red Sea coastline, including strategic positions overlooking the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Another critical global trade chokepoint, the Bab el-Mandeb handles roughly 12% of total global maritime commerce by volume, making its stability critical to international supply chains.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz previewed Trump’s address to reporters Friday, confirming that the president would center his remarks on his administration’s management of global conflict and the ongoing threat he says Iran’s nuclear ambitions pose to global security. “The president will highlight how he has and his administration have confronted complex problems head-on around the world,” Waltz said, adding “He will touch on the importance of ensuring that Iran never has a nuclear weapon.”

Iran will get its own chance to address the global assembly the following day: Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is scheduled to speak Wednesday, accompanied by newly appointed Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. The speaking slot gives Tehran a high-profile international platform to lay out its own narrative of the ongoing conflict and directly push back against U.S. claims just 24 hours after Trump addresses the same body.

Beyond the U.S.-Iran standoff, the 2025 General Assembly also faces growing questions about the UN’s continued relevance in a fragmented global order, as a growing number of major world leaders have opted to skip the in-person gathering entirely.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, who last participated in the UN General Assembly remotely in 2021, will not travel to New York for this year’s event. Instead, he is scheduled to hold one-on-one bilateral talks with Trump in Washington D.C. just four days after the assembly opens. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has not attended the General Assembly in more than a decade, will be represented by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The heads of state of India, Germany, and South Africa have also announced they will send senior representatives rather than attending in person.

The year-long war in Gaza is also set to be one of the most debated topics during the week of diplomatic talks. Despite an outstanding International Criminal Court arrest warrant alleging he has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to address the General Assembly in person on Thursday.

In a repeat of last year’s dynamic, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will be unable to attend the gathering in person after the Trump administration extended its longstanding entry ban on senior Palestinian officials. The White House says the ban is a response to Palestinian efforts to “internationalise the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”, including legal actions against Israel at international judicial bodies. On Thursday, the General Assembly passed a resolution allowing Abbas to address the body via pre-recorded video link.

Diplomats familiar with the General Assembly’s side agenda confirm that a high-level diplomatic meeting will be held alongside the main gathering to advance long-stalled negotiations toward a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, though most observers do not expect significant breakthroughs from the session. Another high-level side meeting will focus on the two-year-long civil war in Sudan, which erupted in April 2023 after a power struggle between Sudan’s ruling military junta and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces devolved into open conflict. The war has displaced more than 14 million Sudanese people and created one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes on the globe, with millions facing acute food insecurity and limited access to medical care. Sudan’s de facto head of state, army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, is scheduled to address the main General Assembly chamber on Thursday.

On the bilateral front, Iraqi media outlets have confirmed that Trump is scheduled to hold a one-on-one meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Faleh al-Zaidi on the sidelines of the General Assembly gathering this week. This report was produced by Middle East Eye, an independent outlet specializing in original coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa, and broader global affairs.