NEW YORK: The head of the UN mission at Hodeidah in Yemen, which is monitoring the ceasefire there, has called for its mandate to be extended.
Maj. Gen. Michael Beary emphasized the strategic and humanitarian significance of the coastal city to the future of Yemen, and said there is no “easy substitute” for its ports.
“The ports serve as a lifeline for Yemen,” he told Arab News. “They supply up to 70 percent of the country’s population with humanitarian aid and essential food supplies.

BEIRUT: Lebanese President Michel Aoun will hold binding consultations with members of the country’s recently elected parliament to name a new prime minister on June 23.

Caretaker PM Najib Mikati is widely seen as the front-runner for the post.

Once named, the new prime minister must form a government, a process that often takes several months.

However, the incoming government will last for only four months, as its term will end with the completion of the presidential term in October.

JEDDAH: Fighters from the Iran-backed Houthi militia have openly boasted of recruiting child soldiers as young as 10 to fight in the Yemen war.

New video footage on social media shows dozens of children in uniforms standing in military formation in a camp in Dhamar province, declaring allegiance to Abdul-Malek Al-Houthi.
“Soldiers of God,” they shout. “We are coming.”

CAIRO: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi affirmed that his country is “continuously working to deepen the partnership with the EU in order to achieve a qualitative leap in the relationship between the two sides.”

In a joint press conference with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, El-Sisi said that the EU is a key partner for Egypt.

RAQQA, Syria: Noura Al-Khalif married a Daesh supporter and then wound up without her husband in a Syrian camp viewed by many as the last surviving pocket of the “caliphate.”

The 31-year-old woman has been back in her hometown outside the northern city of Raqqa for three years but she is struggling to shake off the stigma of having lived in the Al-Hol camp.

“Most of my neighbors call me a Daesh supporter,” she told AFP from her father’s house near Raqqa, where she now lives with her two children.