Gaza war, Red Sea attacks may push Yemen back into war, says UN envoy

The longer the war in Gaza goes on and Yemen's Houthi rebels keep attacking ships in the Red Sea the greater the risk that Yemen could be propelled back into war, the UN special envoy for the poorest Arab nation warned on Thursday.

Hans Grundberg told the UN Security Council it has been impossible to shield his promising efforts to restore peace to Yemen because the reality is, what happens regionally impacts Yemen and what happens in Yemen can impact the region.

Since November, the Iranian-backed Houthis have targeted ships in the Red Sea to demand a cease-fire in Israel's offensive in Gaza. It began after Gaza's Hamas rulers launched a surprise attack in southern Israel on October 7 that killed about 1,200 people and led to about 250 others being taken captive. Israel's ongoing military operation has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry.

The Houthi attacks targeting vessels since November, however, have increasingly had little or no connection to Israel, the United States or other nations involved in the war. In the first fatal strike, a Houthi missile struck a commercial ship in the Gulf of Aden last week, killing three of its crew members and forcing survivors to abandon the vessel.

The war between the Houthis and pro-government forces backed by a coalition of Gulf Arab states has raged since 2014 when the Houthis swept down from the mountains, seized much of northern Yemen and the country's capital, Sanaa, and forced the internationally recognised government to flee into exile to Saudi Arabia. Since then, more than 150,000 people have been killed by the violence and 3 million have been displaced.

Fighting has decreased markedly in Yemen since a truce in April 2022, but there are still hotspots in the country.

Grundberg, who has been trying to mediate a cease-fire and launch a political process, told the council that the UN had hoped, and Yemenis had expected, that by the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began several days ago, we would have had an agreement on a nationwide cease-fire and measures to improve living conditions in Yemen.

The UN envoy said he also had hoped to be briefing council members about preparations for an inclusive political process.

But with the ongoing Gaza War and continuing Houthi attacks, he warned the council that the longer the escalatory environment continues, the more challenging Yemen's mediation space will become.