Saudi-led coalition launches 30 air strikes in Yemen

T-Mag Sunday 07/August/2016 20:02 PM
By: Times News Service
Saudi-led coalition launches 30 air strikes in Yemen

Cairo: A Saudi-led military coalition carried out around 30 air strikes throughout Yemen on Sunday, residents said, a day after UN talks to end a civil war there expired without achieving peace.
The bombings were aimed at Yemen's armed Houthi movement in Sanaa, Saada, Jawf, Hajja and Taiz provinces, stretching from the country's far north to coastal south.
There were no immediate reports of casualties in the strikes, which were carried out largely in remote war zones.
But on battlefronts in two areas northeast of the capital Sanaa and in southern Bayda province, local officials said about 40 fighters were killed from both sides in renewed clashes.
Saudi Arabia and its mostly Arab allies intervened in Yemen's civil war in March 2015 but have failed to restore the exiled government to the Houthi-run capital.
Nearly three months of fractious negotiations in Kuwait helped to reduce the level of fighting that has killed at least 6,400 people and unleashed a humanitarian crisis.
The UN pledged that the talks would be renewed at an unspecified venue within a month.
On Saturday, forces loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi launched a new offensive east of the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Saturday, the military command said.
The offensive was backed by air strikes from a Saudi-led coalition.
The pro-Hadi sabanew.net news agency said that the Yemeni army and allied local tribesmen, backed by Arab coalition air strikes, began a major operation to "liberate the district of Nehem east of Sanaa".
The area is a key route to the capital, which has been under Houthi control since 2014.
"The army and the resistance have managed to liberate a number of important military positions that had been controlled by the coup militias, most prominent of which is the Manara mount which overlooks the centre of Nehem district," the agency quoted a military spokesman as saying.
Fighting was also reported on the Yemeni-Saudi border, where a Saudi border guard was killed by fire directed from the Yemeni side, the Saudi state news agency SPA said, citing a security spokesman.
A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition accused the Houthis of escalating attacks along the border, where the alliance had scaled back its military operations to give the Yemeni peace talks a chance to succeed.
"The militias began military operations along the border after the suspension of the Yemeni consultations," the spokesman, General Ahmed Al Asseri, told the Saudi-owned Al Hadath television, referring to the Houthis.
"The Houthi militias are trying to achieve gains on the ground to make up for political losses," he added.