Category: Yemen

OPEN Map Map: Saudi-Backed Forces Gain Momentum AMMAN, Jordan — A pledge by Saudi Arabia to halt its military operations in Yemen failed to stop ferocious fighting across the country on Monday as a humanitarian aid group warned that more than six million people were facing starvation because of the war. Saudi Arabia, which leads an Arab military coalition that has been fighting Yemen’s Houthi rebels since March, said Saturday that it would pause its military operations for five days to allow for the delivery of humanitarian relief supplies. But there was no sign of a letup in the violence on Monday, dashing hopes that the Saudi declaration would lead even briefly to a broader truce. The Houthis and their allies fought to advance in several provinces, shelling the southern port city of Aden and firing rockets across the Saudi border, according to local military officials and Houthi media […]

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A Saudi soldier stands guard as servicemen on a Saudi military cargo plane prepare to unload aid at the international airport of Yemen’s southern port city of Aden July 24, 2015. A Saudi-led airstrike on Yemen’s Taiz killed at least 55 people and left tens injured, Houthi-controlled news agency Saba said on Saturday. A coalition of Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, has been bombarding Iran-allied Houthi forces in Yemen since late March in a bid to reinstate President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has fled to Riyadh. The Saba agency quoted a local source in Taiz as saying that the bombing targeted the Mokha area inhabited mostly by engineers and workers of a power station and some displaced families. The number of casualties is expected to rise as rescue services are still working in the area and several of those injured and transferred to nearby hospitals are in serious […]

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Military vehicles of the Southern Resistance fighters move during clashes with Houthi fighters on a street in Yemen’s southern port city of Aden July 17, 2015. Local fighters and army forces in Yemen have wrested two military bases from Houthi forces overnight, residents and officials said, building on a week of gains against the country’s dominant faction. The advances come a day after Yemen’s government in exile declared the key southern city of Aden "liberated," in their biggest victory yet in a Saudi-led air campaign and civil war that has raged almost four months and killed more than 3,500 people. Saudi-backed Yemeni forces backed up by air strikes seized the Labuza army base in Lahj province north of the port city and the headquarters of the 117th armored division in eastern Shabwa province some 230km (145 miles) away. Officials in the anti-Houthi forces say the offensive was planned for […]

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CAIRO — The exiled prime minister of Yemen said early Friday that Saudi-backed forces in Aden had “completely liberated” the southern city from the Houthi rebels who have been fighting to control it for nearly four months. The prime minister, Khaled Bahah, writing on Facebook, called it a “historic moment” and said his government would turn its attention to repairing the devastation in Aden and driving the Houthis from other areas of Yemen. Security officials and witnesses in Aden said that clashes were continuing in several areas on Friday, and that the Houthis retained at least partial control of at least one district. The rapid advances by the Saudi-backed forces in the city over the past few days appeared hard to reverse, however, signaling the first significant defeat for the Houthis and their allies. Mr. Bahah’s government, led by President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, fled to Saudi Arabia in […]

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Aden: Fuel shortages in war-torn Yemen could cause more deaths than the continuing conflict, which rages on three days after the start of a UN-brokered humanitarian truce, an international aid agency said on Tuesday. The lack of fuel, caused by fighting and restrictions on imports, has affected food deliveries, water supplies and health services for most of Yemen’s population, according to Oxfam. A Saudi-led Arab coalition has been bombarding the Iranian-allied Al Houthi rebel movement — Yemen’s dominant force — since late March in a bid to reinstate exiled President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who has fled to Riyadh. A week-long pause in the fighting was meant to have started on Saturday to allow aid deliveries, but the Saudi-led alliance said it had not been asked by President Hadi, in whose name it is acting, to stop its raids. “In Yemen, fuel is critical,” Oxfam country director for Yemen […]

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An attack by Yemeni Houthi rebels on an oil refinery in the port city of Aden has sparked a fire at a storage tank that may spread, threatening supplies, said Continue Reading

Saudi-led air strikes and heavy shelling between warring factions shook several cities in Yemen on Saturday, residents said, violating a United Nations humanitarian truce which took effect just before midnight. The U.N.-brokered pause in the fighting was meant to last a week to allow aid deliveries to the country’s 21 million people who have endured over three months of bombing and civil war. A coalition of Arab states has been bombing the Iranian-allied Houthi rebel movement – Yemen’s dominant force – since late March in a bid to restore to power President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has fled to Riyadh. Air raids pounded Houthi and Yemeni army units in the capital Sanaa and in the embattled southern cities of Taiz and Aden, where residents also reported intense artillery exchanges between the fighters and local militiamen. In Aden, one of the country’s most deprived and war-torn areas, witnesses said Houthi […]

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Two deadly car bombs hit the capital Sanaa and a southern city in Yemen on Tuesday, state news agency Saba reported, a day after air strike and clashes killed almost 200 people nationwide. Islamic State in Yemen claimed responsibility in a statement posted online for the Sanaa attack, latest in a string of recent actions by the hardline Sunni Muslim group against Shi’ite Houthis who run the capital. One of the explosives-laden cars detonated near a hospital in downtown Sanaa, which the news agency controlled by Yemen’s dominant Houthi group said killed and injured "numerous" people, while another killed around 10 people in al-Bayda, capital of a province in the country’s battle-weary south. Saudi-led coalition air strikes and clashes killed at least 176 fighters and civilians in Yemen on Monday, residents and media run by the Houthi movement said, the highest daily toll since the Arab air offensive began […]

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Photo Yemenis waited to buy food and water in Taiz on Friday. The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has appealed for a two-week humanitarian truce in honor of Ramadan, which began this week. Credit European Pressphoto Agency UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations mediator for Yemen peace talks said on Friday that four days of discussions had ended with no agreement for even a brief pause in fighting, but that he remained “optimistic,” as aid agencies warned that the humanitarian crisis enveloping the country had worsened. “We feel it requires further consultation and we can achieve it pretty soon,” said the mediator, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed , a Mauritanian diplomat, at a news conference in Geneva, broadcast on the United Nations website. “I remain optimistic.” Yemen has been pummeled by Saudi-led airstrikes since late March, after Houthi rebels from the north drove the sitting president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour […]

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