World Echo

Saudi Arabia’s shutdown of its vital East-West oil pipeline following drone strikes has brought renewed attention to its role in carrying crude from the kingdom’s eastern oil-producing region to the Red Sea while bypassing the Strait of Hormuz. The Saudi Energy Ministry said on Friday that the pipeline had been targeted on Thursday morning by several drones in the Riyadh and Medina regions, prompting authorities to halt its operation as a precaution. An official ministry source, cited by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA), said emergency and technical teams had begun securing the pipeline and checking its safety, adding that any further developments would be announced as they became available. The Saudi Foreign Ministry said the attack was carried out using several drones launched from Iraq and resulted in injuries and material damage. The ministry did not specify the number of casualties, the extent of damage to the pipeline or its pumping stations, or how long the shutd...

An Afghan woman accused of supporting the Islamic State has been deported from the United States in the first case to be pursued by the US Department of ​Justice through a little-known court created 30 years ago to deport "alien terrorists." Nazira Haji ‌Zada, a 47-year-old who had been residing in Texas as a lawful permanent resident of the United States, was deported after agreeing not to continue to fight against her removal in the Alien Terrorist Removal Court following her ​arrest in July, the department said on Friday. The Justice Department had accused her of ​helping conceal a failed, Islamic State-inspired plot to commit a mass shooting on ⁠Election Day 2024. She was never charged with any crime, but her son and son-in-law ​pleaded guilty to related charges last year. Her case had been filed in a court that had ​gone unused in the decades since its creation by Congress in 1996. That court allows the government to rely on classified evidence in deportation...

The Israeli army on Friday claimed to have killed three Palestinian commanders in Gaza, alleging they were part of the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas. “In a precise strike yesterday, Israeli forces and the Shin Bet security agency eliminated Mohammed al-Yazouri in the Khan Younis area,” the army said in a statement. It claimed that al-Yazouri served as commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade. The army also claimed that Hudhaifa Muammar, a “company commander,” and Muhammad Bahjat Rashi, who it said was from Hamas’ military wing in the Khan Younis Brigade, were killed in the same strike. There was no immediate comment from Hamas or the Qassam Brigades. Read: Israeli whistleblowers detail Gaza civilian toll Since October 2023, Israel has been carrying out a genocide in Gaza, killing more than 73,000 Palestinians and injuring over 174,000 others, while destroying around 90% of the enclave’s infrastructure. The attacks conti...

The United Arab Emirates is quietly revising plans for a 5-gigawatt AI data centre project – one of the biggest outside the US – after the Iran ​war prompted a rethink of how and where critical infrastructure should be built, six people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Originally envisaged as a 10-square-mile (26-square-kilometre) campus in Abu Dhabi, the project will ‌now likely comprise a network of data centres spread across the UAE, according to four of the sources, who all spoke on condition of anonymity. Authorities are also considering ways to better protect the facilities from drone and missile attacks, including with air defences and by building some underground, they said. The likely modifications to the project’s blueprint have not previously been reported. Data centre project is central to UAE's global AI ambitions Plans for the UAE-US AI Campus, which is being built in partnership with American tech companies, were announced du...

The lightning Houthi advance down Yemen's Red Sea coast this week ​came with direct guidance from Iran's Revolutionary Guards seeking to open a new front in Iran's war with the U.S., according to Yemeni government, Iranian and ‌regional sources. By seizing the southwestern port city of Mocha, the Houthis have strengthened their chokehold on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a key waterway whose disruption further constricts global energy supplies after Iran blockades the Strait of Hormuz. Six months into the wider regional conflict between the Houthis' Iranian allies and the United States, the group now looks focused on consolidating that grip on the strait even as opposing government forces backed by Saudi Arabia focus on an offensive in ​the north. Two Iranian sources claimed that Iran told the Houthis last week to escalate their attacks on Saudi Arabia and promised more funding, weapons and senior officers to help them...

When US President Donald Trump campaigned for a second term in the White House, he promised to be a “president of peace” who would stop foreign wars, not start them. Now, a quarter-century after the September 11, 2001, attacks that triggered America’s global “war on terror,” he is entangled in an unpopular conflict of his own making that analysts say risks becoming his version of a “forever war." With the 9/11 anniversary at hand, Trump’s war against Iran is drawing comparisons in foreign policy circles to the ​long, divisive conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq that preceded it. It is also prompting questions about whether the US has again failed to learn the lessons of past conflicts or prepare a clear exit strategy. “Trump ‌has broken an important post-Iraq and Afghanistan constraint in Washington against launching another major, open-ended war in the Middle East,” said Sina Toossi of the Centre for International Po...

Israeli authorities are considering plans to build 1,670 new housing units in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission said late Wednesday. In a statement, the commission said the development came shortly after 12 Western countries decided to impose trade restrictions on products from Jewish settlements and called on Israel to halt settlement expansion. It said the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has approved 104 new Jewish settlements and established 160 agricultural settlement outposts since taking office in late 2022. The plans, which have reached the final approval stage, include 365 new housing units in the Maale Amos settlement southeast of Bethlehem and 200 in the Talmon settlement northwest of Ramallah. Read: FO welcomes UK's steps against Israel as 'clear rejection of illegal actions' in occupied Palestine The commission said the plans also include establishing thre...