2 UAE tankers attacked while transiting Strait of Hormuz

The United Arab Emirates is blaming Iran for firing drones at two tankers operated by a state-owned oil company as they sail through the Strait of Hormuz, saying Friday that the attacks are acts of piracy. The attacks cause no casualties but underline the dangers faced by vessels moving cargo through the critical waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open oceans as Iran maintains a firm grip on the passage.

Here’s a look at the latest developments in the Iran war and the wider Middle East.

Two tankers owned by Abu Dhabi’s state-owned oil and gas company ADNOC are attacked Thursday evening while transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the company says. It adds that the attack causes no injuries and that “the situation has been brought under control.”

The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre says two vessels are reported to have suffered minor damage after being attacked by drones while transiting the Strait of Hormuz. It does not identify them as the ADNOC ships, but the incident appears to be the same.

The UAE’s Foreign Ministry blames Iran for the attacks and calls them a “flagrant violation” of United Nations principles on 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 says.

There is no immediate response from Iran.

Activists march through the occupied West Bank carrying food and water to Palestinians who have been under siege by Israeli settlers for days.

Three Palestinian families in the town of Qusra are unable to leave their homes for nearly a week after settlers surround the area. Israeli troops intervene multiple times, but the settlers keep returning.

The standoff in the northern West Bank town is the latest in a wave of settler violence across the territory, which Israel seizes in the 1967 Middle East war and which Palestinians seek as part of a future state.

Defence Minister Israel Katz instructs the army to prepare a plan to transfer responsibility for civilian-related matters to the police, the Defence Ministry says in a statement.

In Iraq, a drone is intercepted over Irbil in the country's semiautonomous northern Kurdish region, in an area of the city where several hotels and consulates are located.

The regional counterterrorism service says there are no casualties.

It is not immediately clear who launches the drone. Since the start of the war between Iran, the United States and Israel, Iran and Iranian-backed Iraqi militant groups have regularly attacked US military and diplomatic facilities in Iraq, as well as bases belonging to exiled Iranian Kurdish dissident groups.

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and negotiator Jared Kushner is due to travel to the Middle East next week to advance plans for ending the conflict in Gaza after a deal recently announced by the Trump administration faces Israeli opposition.

An official with the Board of Peace, the body Trump establishes to oversee the fragile ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, says Kushner, board high representative Nickolay Mladenov and executive board member and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair are due to arrive in Israel on Sunday.

The group then plans to travel to Cairo, where meetings of a Palestinian technocratic group expected to assume control of Gaza under a US-brokered ceasefire deal have been taking place for several months, the official says.

The official speaks on condition of anonymity because details of the trip have not yet been finalised.