Yemen’s Houthis march during a mobilization campaign in Sanaa, September 10, 2026 (AP)
UPDATES: US War on Iran, Day 235 — Houthis Strike Yemen Presidential Palace, Killing 5
UPDATE 0613 GMT:
Saudi Arabia has postponed the Future Investment Initiative until next year because of strikes by Yemen’s Houthis.
The annual event was scheduled for October 26-29. The head of the FII Institute, Dr. Maha Bint Mishari Al Saud, said the postponement “comes from a deep commitment to our partners, members, speakers and delegates”.
UPDATE 0608 GMT:
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has visited the Middle East.
Hegseth did not give details beyond a tweet referring to a meeting with troops of Central Command.
However, Axios reported that he met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, just before national elections on October 27.
UPDATE 0556 GMT:
The UN’s World Food Programme is ending support for 500,000 people in Gaza, almost a quarter of the Strip’s population, because of cuts.
Two-thirds of the population, crammed into the 30% of Gaza which is not occupied by Israel, face crisis levels of food insecurity. Around 200,000 people are at risk of famine.
A year after declaration of a ceasefire and the creation of a “Board of Peace”, reconstruction has not begun. With few jobs available and 80% unemployment, the vast majority rely on food aid. One in eight children are chronically malnourished or stunted, and they may have suffered permanent damage.
WFP programmes helped feed around 1.6 million people this summer. However, funding has decreased by more than half from last year. The WFP needs more than £300 million over the next six months to restore and maintain critical programmes in Palestine.
Aid has been scaled back to 1.1 million people per month. Cuts have been implemented in deliveries of ration boxes, cash stipends to buy food in markets, and hot meals at community kitchens.
Gaza was self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables before the war of October 2023, but the vast majority of farmland has been occupied by Israel’s military. Greenhouse and irrigation systems supporting agricultural production have been destroyed.
ORIGINAL ENTRY: Yemen’s Houthis killed at least 58 people and injured more than 200 in a ballistic missile attack on a training camp for Yemen Government forces on Monday.
The toll was the largest in a single incident since fighting surged in September, as the Houthis took the Red Sea coast, with control of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, and advanced on Yemen’s third-largest city Taiz.
The Houthis fired three ballistic missiles on the al-Alam camp in Shabwa Province in southwest Yemen. Most of the casualties were young recruits.
The injured were taken to a hospital in the local capital Ataq amid pleas for blood donations.
A Yemen Government spokesperson said the attacked site was not linked to the current fighting, but was “a training centre where new recruits in the internal security forces of Shabwa Governorate receive training and qualification programmes.”
Rashad al-Alimi, the President of the UN-recognized Government pledged an immediate, strong response. He declared that the strikes “reflect the Houthi militias’ approach of resorting to cowardly terrorist attacks whenever they face pressures or their Iranian-backed sabotage plots falter”.
Alimi called UN Secretary General António Guterres to request classification of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization. Shabwa Governor Awad bin al-Wazir called for extra air defenses with troops fighting across six fronts.
Houthi forces have cut the road between Government-run Shabwa and the Houthi-run Bayda governorate.
The Houthi military spokesperson claimed Saudi officers are among the dead and wounded: “We warn the deceived ones against responding to the Saudi enemy’s calls to lure them with his defiled money to the pyres of death, and to exploit them instead of his soldiers who are indifferent to their lives.”
