China has privately asked Tehran to help rein in Yemen’s Houthis after an appeal to Beijing by Saudi Arabia following the Iran-backed group’s military blitz in the past week, according to three Iranian sources familiar with the matter.

The Saudi-led coalition battling Yemen’s Houthis yesterday accused them of targeting Islam’s holy city Makkah, sparking outrage across the Muslim world.

Saudi Arabia and Egypt’s leaders called yesterday for free navigation in the Red Sea, after Riyadh vowed a firm response to attacks by Yemen’s Houthis, who now control the southern entrance to the key waterway.

The alerts, including the first one issued in Makkah since the Middle East war began, were quickly lifted

Maritime trackers received new reports of an attack on a ship in the Strait of Hormuz yesterday, adding to concerns about Iran-related threats to global energy supplies after Saudi Arabia shut down a vital oil pipeline.

Saudi Arabia has shut down its East-West pipeline after the vital oil conduit came under aerial attack in the widening Middle East war, threatening to send energy prices even higher.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said it fired ballistic missiles at a base in Jordan used by the US military and attacked 10 ships yesterday, after the US said it had destroyed five Iranian oil tankers, in a sharp escalation of the six-month-old war.

Yemen’s Tehran-backed Houthis attacked four cities in the south of US ally Saudi Arabia yesterday, wounding more than 70 people and setting oil installations ablaze in what appeared to be a major expansion of the six-month-old Middle East war.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said yesterday that they had attacked a US naval drone that was trying to enter the Strait of Hormuz, hours after Tehran and Washington traded strikes.

Iran’s army yesterday said it targeted US bases in the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, despite threats of further strikes by US President Donald Trump.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan yesterday said that a roadmap was being worked on for the process of other countries joining the joint defence pact established earlier this month by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

An Israeli airstrike killed two Palestinians, including a three-year-old child, in the central Gaza Strip yesterday, health officials said.

Top officials from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan will gather in Istanbul today for a first committee meeting under the joint defence accord that they signed this month, a Turkish foreign ministry source said.

Israeli strikes killed three people in Gaza yesterday, authorities in the Palestinian territory said, in the latest day of attacks despite international appeals to move ahead on a peace plan.

Iran said yesterday that its response to any new US threats would be “devastating” after Washington pledged to impose the toughest financial penalties in history with the aim of toppling the Iranian leadership.

Nearly a dozen fishermen were killed off Bandar Abbas and nearby southern islands, and 17 others from the neighbouring Sistan-Baluchistan province south of Hormuz went missing during months of fighting, according to Iranian media

Activists attempted to deliver supplies to Palestinians under an almost week-long settler siege in the West Bank yesterday, with the Israeli military again deployed at the flashpoint site.

US President Donald Trump took a secret military flight from Turkey last month in an operation that involved him being moved between aircraft in a catering truck, an extraordinary deception prompted by an Iranian assassination threat, the Washington Post reported.

Iran’s foreign ministry said yesterday that a defence pact signed last week between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan was “a sign of a change in the perception” of countries in the region towards the United States.

Expatriates’ welfare minister pledges support for families