By The Associated Press
The United Arab Emirates is blaming Iran for firing drones at two tankers operated by a state-owned oil company as they sailed through the Strait of Hormuz, saying Friday that the attacks were acts of piracy. The attacks caused no casualties but underlined the dangers faced by vessels seeking to move cargo through the critical waterway that leads from the Persian Gulf to the open oceans as Iran keeps a firm grip on the passage.
Here’s a look at the latest developments in the Iran war and the wider Middle East. Full coverage can be found here.
2 oil tankers hit by drones as they transited Strait of Hormuz
Two tankers owned by Abu Dhabi’s state-owned oil and gas company ADNOC were attacked Thursday evening while transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the company said. It added that the attack caused no injuries and that “the situation has been brought under control.”
The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center said two vessels were reported to have suffered minor damage when attacked by drones while transiting the Strait of Hormuz. It did not identify them as the ADNOC ships but it appeared to be the same incident.
The UAE’s Foreign Ministry blamed the attacks on Iran and said they were a “flagrant violation” of the United Nations’ principles of freedom of navigation.
“Targeting commercial shipping and using the Strait of Hormuz as a tool of economic coercion or blackmail represents acts of piracy by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, and constitutes a direct threat to the stability of the region, its peoples, and global energy security,” the Foreign Ministry said.
There was no immediate response from Iran.
Activists bring food and water to Palestinians under siege by Israeli settlers
Activists marched through the occupied West Bank bringing food and water to Palestinians who have been under siege by Israeli settlers for days.
Three Palestinian families in the town of Qusra have been unable to leave their homes for nearly a week after settlers surrounded the area. Israeli troops intervened multiple times, but the settlers have kept returning.
The standoff in the northern West Bank town of Qusra is the latest in a wave of settler violence convulsing the territory, which Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war and which would make up part of a future Palestinian state.
Defense Minister Israel Katz instructed the army to prepare a plan to transfer power to the police to enforce civilian related matters, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Drone intercepted over Irbil in area home to hotels and consulates
In Iraq, a drone was intercepted over Irbil in the country’s semiautonomous northern Kurdish region, in an area of the city where a number of hotels and consulates are located.
The regional counterterrorism service said in a statement that there were no casualties.
It was not immediately clear who had launched the drone, but since the beginning of the war between Iran and the United States and Israel, Iran and Iranian-backed Iraqi militant groups have launched regular attacks on U.S. military and diplomatic facilities in Iraq and on bases of exiled Iranian Kurdish dissident groups.
Kushner will head to Middle East for talks on Gaza
President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and negotiator Jared Kushner will travel to the Middle East next week to try to advance plans for an end to the conflict in Gaza after a deal recently announced by the Trump administration ran into Israeli opposition.
An official with the Board of Peace, the body Trump established to oversee the fragile ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, said Kushner, board high representative Nickolay Mladenov, and executive board member and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would arrive in Israel on Sunday.
The group will then travel to Cairo, where meetings of a Palestinian technocratic group set to assume control of Gaza under a U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal have been taking place for the past several months, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because planning for details of the trip has not yet been finalized.
The trip was reported earlier by Axios.
— Matthew Lee in Washington
