Israel establishing intelligence bases on Yemeni island in cooperation with UAE: Report

Israel, in cooperation with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is to build intelligence-gathering bases on a Yemeni island in a strategic area overlooking the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a new report says, four years after Tel Aviv began to build its largest spy base in the region.

Citing a number of sources, including some Yemeni ones, the French-language news outlet JForum said in a report that the Tel Aviv regime plans to build a number of spy bases on Socotra Island, which is almost 3,650 square kilometers.

Socotra, some 350 kilometers south of Yemen in the Indian Ocean, is the name of the largest island of a Yemeni archipelago, where a number of smaller islands are still uninhabited.

According to the report, a delegation of Israeli and Emirati intelligence officers arrived on the Socotra Island very recently and examined various locations for establishing the planned intelligence bases.

It cited an unnamed high-ranking Eritrean source as saying that Israel in 2016 had started to build its largest intelligence-gathering base at the top of Mount Ambassaira, south of the Eritrean capital of Asmara.

The purpose of the base, according to the report, is to electronically monitor forces belonging to a Saudi-led military coalition waging a war against Yemen and the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the region, the report added.

It also monitors the activities of Houthi fighters in Yemen and Iran’s naval movements in the region, beside analyzing sea and air traffic in the southern Red Sea, it added.

According to the report, the Israelis and Emiratis are currently making all logistical preparations to establish intelligence bases to collect information from across the Gulf of Eden, including Bab al-Mandab and south of Yemen, which is under the control of forces loyal to the UAE.

Two sites on Socotra have so far been selected for spy bases, namely the Momi region in the east of the island, where the Jamgua Center will be built and a locality in the west of the island, where Katanan Center will be established, it added.

Citing Yemeni sources, the report went on to say that Israeli and Emirati intelligence experts believe that these two sites are topographically the most appropriate places to set up the bases, whose jobs will be collecting electronic information from southern Yemen, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Eden, the Egyptian Bab al-Mandab and the Horn of Africa.

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