Fighting between Houthis and Saudi-backed forces in Yemen escalates

Yemen's west coast has seen a sharp escalation in fighting between Houthi forces and Saudi-backed government troops, with hundreds of casualties reported and military experts warning of a potential war of attrition near the strategic Bab al-Mandab strait.

The clashes are concentrated along the Red Sea coast toward Bab al-Mandab, the strait linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden and a key shipping route between Asia and Europe.

The Saudi-backed National Resistance Forces, which support the Yemeni government, say they lost around 500 fighters and that nearly 1,500 others were wounded in fighting between August 9 and September 10.

The commander of the National Resistance Forces has announced the formation of the Tihama Resistance Force as an independent unit under the Joint Operations Command of the Saudi-led coalition. He said its mission is to retake coastal areas lost by forces opposing the Houthis.

Military experts say the restructuring of forces could pave the way for a new phase of fighting along the western coast, with the area potentially becoming a prolonged war of attrition.

"I believe that the remaining battles inside Yemen, no matter how much Saudi Arabia mobilizes, supports, or deploys forces that it considers support for the Yemeni government, are, from my military assessment, fronts that are not influential nor effective. Yet, clashes may continue there, and there may be a war of attrition," said Abdulghani Al-Zubaidi, a military analyst in Sanaa.

On the ground, fighting was reported in Dhubab, near Bab al-Mandab, between government forces and the Houthis. The Houthis said Saudi aircraft carried out dozens of airstrikes in several provinces. Government sources said five of those strikes targeted the Bab al-Mandab area alone.

Meanwhile, the Yemeni government says it has told UN envoy Hans Grundberg that it remains ready for peace and stressed that navigation through Bab al-Mandab is safe. The UN says it is continuing efforts to reduce tensions and bring the parties back to the political process.

Fighting between Houthis and Saudi-backed forces in Yemen escalates

A newly released Chinese documentary provides a rare glimpse into the country's crackdown on cross-border telecom scam networks in northern Myanmar, highlighting the pivotal role of technological countermeasures in the campaign.

Titled "The Demise of Telecom Fraud in Northern Myanmar," the three-part documentary was jointly produced by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security and China Media Group, and was aired on CCTV nationwide on Monday. It reveals the brutal conditions inside telecom fraud compounds in northern Myanmar, where scams mainly targeted Chinese citizens.

The documentary unveils the covert methods used by fraud gangs, such as stealing China's communication signals to make their scams highly deceptive.

"For example, they secretly ran wireless bridges, cables and fiber optics to pull domestic network signals into Muse (town in Myanmar) for remote use, allowing them to pose as users inside China and carry out fraud," said Zhang Zheng, a second-level inspector at the Cybersecurity Administration Bureau of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

According to the documentary, expert teams from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology worked with public security authorities to conduct a sweeping inspection for illegal equipment in key areas.

In just three months, they shut down 75,000 fraud-related mobile phone numbers and more than 4,000 broadband accounts, and cleared nearly 100 wireless bridges, effectively cutting off the communication channels between fraudsters and users inside China.

Chinese documentary spotlights tech in Myanmar telecom fraud crackdown