AL-MUKALLA, Yemen: The Houthis have escalated their bombardment of villages in Yemen’s Marib, Lahj, Dhale and Taiz provinces over the past 48 hours while the Yemeni government has ordered the army to remain on high alert to repel Houthi attacks.

Local media reports and residents said that the Houthis discharged artillery shells at homes in the Malaa region of the province’s central region on Saturday evening.

Images shared on social media show flames pouring from the targeted homes, with no confirmed reports of casualties.

JAABAR, Syria: On a riverbank in war-ravaged Syria’s north, felling has reduced what was once a lush forest to dispersed trees and decimated trunks poking out from dry, crumbly soil.

Twelve years of conflict that led to a spike in illegal logging, along with the effects of climate change and other factors, have eroded Syria’s greenery.

The dwindling forest on the shores of the Euphrates River “is shrinking every year,” said Ahmed Al-Sheikh, 40, a supermarket owner in the village of Jaabar, in the Kurdish-held part of Syria’s Raqqa province.

CAIRO: A global aid official urged the international community Sunday to provide more funds to help Sudanese citizens trapped by a monthslong military conflict between rival generals in the African nation.
Jagan Chapagain, the secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said his organizations have received only 7 percent of the $45 million they appealed for to help those inside Sudan. The war pits the military against the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

TUNIS: Tunisia will again supply flour to more than 1,000 non-subsidized bakeries in the North African country after most of them ceased operating, government and industry officials said on Sunday.

The deal could help ease a bread shortage that has worsened over the past two weeks.

Since the beginning of August, European-style bakeries selling baguettes in the formerly French-ruled country had been prevented from accessing their quota of subsidized flour, after President Kais Saied said there should be “one type of bread for all Tunisians.”

CAIRO: Libya’s central bank announced Sunday its reunification after being split for nearly a decade due to the country’s long-running civil war that resulted in two rival administrations, in the east and the west.
The bank said in a terse statement that it has become a “unified sovereign institution” following a meeting in the capital, Tripoli, between Central Bank Governor Sadiq Al-Kabir and his deputy in the country’s east, Marai Rahil.