Yemen’s acting ambassador in Damascus discusses security coordination with Syrian Interior Minister Anas Khattab
Yemen Herald News 
DAMASCUS, Syria — Yemen’s acting ambassador to Syria met Syrian Interior Minister Anas Khattab on Tuesday to discuss security coordination, consular services and residency rules for Yemenis living in Syria.
Mohammed Baaker and Khattab talked about ways to widen security cooperation in areas of common interest, the Yemeni state news agency Saba reported.
The two discussed exchanging expertise between their institutions, Saba said.
They also went over steps to ease consular work, residency procedures and travel visa transactions for Yemeni nationals in Syria, according to the agency.
Baaker briefed Khattab on developments in Yemen, Saba reported. He set out what he called threats posed by Houthi forces to waterways and to international trade.
He said restoring government control over the whole of Yemen’s territory mattered, according to the agency, and argued that Yemen should not become a base for threats to regional and international security. The Houthi administration in Sanaa rejects that characterisation and casts its own operations as a response to Saudi and Israeli action.
Baaker thanked the Syrian Interior Ministry for what he said were facilities extended to Yemen’s diplomatic mission and to Yemeni citizens in Syria, Saba said.
Khattab said Syria supported Yemen’s security and stability, which he called part of the wider regional and international security system, according to the agency.
He said Syria was ready to provide facilities to advance joint work, ease procedures for Yemeni residents and visitors, and keep up coordination on shared interests, Saba reported.
This account of the meeting rests on Saba, which is run by Yemen’s internationally recognised government. Yemen Herald found no independent confirmation of the talks or of what was said in them, and Syria’s Interior Ministry has not published a readout of its own.
Khattab has been Syria’s interior minister in the transitional government since March 2025. In July 2026 he was also made director of the National Security Office, placing two of the country’s security institutions under one official.
The UN Security Council removed Khattab from its ISIL and Al-Qaida sanctions list in December 2025.
Baaker has represented Yemen in Damascus as chargé d’affaires. Saba reported in August that he met Dima al-Mousa, director of the department of agreements and treaties at Syria’s foreign ministry, to go over draft bilateral agreements and memorandums of understanding.
Syria’s transitional government took office after the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. Yemen’s internationally recognised government is seated in Aden. The Houthi administration holds Sanaa.
The meeting came as the fighting in Yemen reached the Red Sea coast.
Houthi forces took the port of Mocha on Sept. 10, Al Jazeera reported. They overran the island of Mayyun, also known as Perim, the following day.
The advances gave the group Yemen’s Red Sea coastline and the eastern side of the Bab al-Mandab strait, a chokepoint between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Houthi positions now sit about 20 kilometres from the African shore, Al Jazeera said.
Houthi units also took the Greater and Lesser Hanish islands and Zuqar island, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Hostilities resumed in July after the Saudi-led coalition stopped an Iranian aircraft from landing in Sanaa without Yemeni government authorisation, Security Council Report said. The Houthis then declared a naval blockade on Saudi-linked shipping in the Red Sea.
A strike on a Tanzanian-flagged vessel in the Bab al-Mandab strait on Aug. 11 killed at least six people, the New York Times reported.
The Houthis fired missiles and drones at oil and economic sites and at an air base in southern Saudi Arabia on Sept. 8, The Associated Press reported. That report put the number of people injured at 73.
The Security Council held an emergency briefing on Yemen on Sept. 10, Security Council Report said. Bahrain and the United Kingdom requested it. UN Special Envoy Hans Grundberg briefed members.
Grundberg had called on the parties to stop fighting and to use the UN-backed Military Coordination Committee in a statement on Sept. 7.
France, which holds the Council presidency this month, asked for a further meeting on Bab al-Mandab for Tuesday afternoon in New York, Agence France-Presse reported, citing diplomatic sources.
The World Health Organization recorded 194 people killed and 884 injured in Taiz governorate and along the Hodeidah and Taiz coasts between Aug. 24 and Sept. 6.
The UN reported on Sept. 8 that more than 5,600 households had left Taiz and southern Hodeidah since the current round of fighting began on Sept. 3.
The UN humanitarian plan for Yemen published in March lists more than 22 million people in need of aid and 18.3 million as acutely food insecure. It counts 5.2 million people displaced inside the country.
More than 2.2 million children under five are acutely malnourished, the plan says, 516,157 of them severely. The appeal seeks 2.16 billion dollars to reach 12 million people.
Saudi Arabia has asked the Council to enforce resolution 2216 of April 2015, which imposed a targeted arms embargo on the Houthis, and resolution 2722 of January 2024, which demanded that the group stop attacking commercial shipping, Security Council Report said.
Saba said the two men referred to what they described as long-standing ties between Yemen and Syria.
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