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.

-Israel intelligence bases