Areas controlled by the rebels have been targeted by the military coalitions directed by Riyadh, in response to a series of hush attacks in recent days.
Le Monde with AFP
The military coalition led by Saudi Arabia in Yemen bombed on Saturday 26 to Sunday 27 March, areas controlled by the Houtist rebels, after they unilaterally announced a three-day truce , “said Riyadh.
The war that ravages the Yemen, a poor country of the Arabian Peninsula, for more than seven years opposes the procurement forces, supported by the coalition, to the Houtists, rebels supported by the great rival of Ryad, Iran.
Saturday night, around midnight, the coalition announced having “launched air strikes on camps [military] and strategic areas of the Houtist rebels in Sanaa,” the capital in the hands of the rebels since 2014, according to the television channel of Saudi State, Al-Ekhbariya. No comments were made immediately on potential victims in these raids.
Efforts for a truce during Ramadan
The Coalition has strengthened the raids on areas controlled by the Houtist rebels, including SANAA (North) and the southern region of Hodeida (West), in response to a new series of rebels attacks against Saudi Arabia, Friday. One of them provoked – without making any victims – a gigantic fire at a petroleum site in Jedda (West), close to the Formula 1 circuit which welcomed this weekend the Grand Prix of Saudi Arabia.
But the next day, the rebels announced that they would stop their offensives in their country as well as in Saudi Arabia for “three days”.
This truce could become “permanent” if Saudi Arabia raises the “blockade” on Yemen, ceases its air raids and withdraws its “foreign forces” from the country, “said Mahdi Al-Mashat, senior official of the Houtists. The Saudis did not react to this ad.
Sunday, the United Nations Special Envoy Office for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, announced that the latter “continued his efforts for a truce during Ramadan”, the month of Muslim fasting which takes place this year in April. “He reiterates his call to de-escalation and welcomes all the measures taken by the parties in that direction,” he said on Twitter.
“Associous perspectives”
Saturday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, had “firmly condemned the recent climbing of the conflict in Yemen”, denouncing so much “the air attacks on Friday by the Houtists” that “the air strikes of the coalition. followed in Sanaa “. According to the UN, these raids “would have killed eight civilians, including five children and two women”.
This situation allows for “extremely worrying perspectives”, according to Achim Steiner, the head of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). “The reality is that desperation, poverty, destruction, has reached such a level in Yemen that the majority of the population is no longer able, in one way or another, to support itself” , told the France-Presse agency (AFP) the UN Manager.
With nearly 380,000 deaths and millions of displaced by the United Nations, the war caused one of the worst humanitarian drama in Yemen, much of the population being faced with acute hunger, sometimes close. famine.