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Washington is working to recruit UAE-backed mercenary groups in Yemen to “distract Sanaa” from its military operations against Israel, Al-Akhbar revealed on 8 December.

“The United States is moving to activate factions loyal to the UAE in Yemen to distract Sanaa from continuing to carry out more air and sea attacks against the Israeli entity,” the Lebanese daily reports.

According to the report, US special envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking met with the head of the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC), Aidarous al-Zubaidi. The meeting took place in the Emirati capital Abu Dhabi.

The STC is one of three parallel governments in Yemen. The UAE backs it in support of an independent secessionist state in south Yemen.

Far from being restrained, Israel is fighting one of the most ferociously murderous wars in the 21st century. It’s a war that, as Lloyd Austin notes, makes little strategic sense. Far from defeating Hamas, it will radicalize a new generation of Palestinians. Realizing this reality, Netanyahu is now shopping around a proposal to “thin out” Gaza’s population and expel the surviving residents into neighboring countries—a proposal that he is pitching to the leaders of both parties in Congress.

In one case discussed by the sources, the Israeli military command knowingly approved the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in an attempt to assassinate a single top Hamas military commander. “The numbers increased from dozens of civilian deaths [permitted] as collateral damage as part of an attack on a senior official in previous operations, to hundreds of civilian deaths as collateral damage,” said one source.

“Nothing happens by accident,” said another source. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”

According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.”

As Israel escalates its attacks on Gaza, the State Department is discouraging diplomats working on Middle East issues from making public statements suggesting the U.S. wants to see less violence, according to internal emails viewed by HuffPost.

In messages circulated on Friday, State Department staff wrote that high-level officials do not want press materials to include three specific phrases: “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed” and “restoring calm.”

Fossil fuel giant Equinor is behind the huge Hywind Tampern farm which, with 88 megawatts (MW) of capacity, will generate energy to supply nearby oil and gas platforms.