Houthi rebels breached a ceasefire hours after the Yemeni government said the army would suspend military operations, state-run Yemen News Agency SABA reported, citing government officials.
Houthi rebels attacked houses and military camps with rockets in five districts, SABA reported, citing a spokesman for the Office of the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. The report didn’t say whether the ceasefire, which started at noon on Saturday, had been abandoned by the government.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh had urged Shiite rebels on Friday not to miss the chance for peace offered by his government’s decision to suspend a five-week-old offensive as fighting raged on regardless.
“We renew this appeal to them to listen to the voice of reason, adopt a policy of peace and seize this new opportunity,” Saleh said.
Earlier the government said a suspension of fighting in the mountainous north would become a permanent ceasefire if the rebels abided by certain conditions. A rebel spokesman said they would “examine” them.
Posted on defense ministry Web site www.26sep.net, the government statement said the move was a response to appeals to allow humanitarian aid into the Saada region, where thousands of civilians have been displaced by the fighting.
The government said a permanent ceasefire would come into effect if the rebels accepted a series of conditions, including “respect the ceasefire and the opening of roads, evacuate their positions and free captured civilians and soldiers.”
The rebels, however, accused the army of “continuing their aggression in the combat zone despite announcing a suspension of hostilities.”
It said army attacks were “accompanied by intense rocket and shellfire,” comparing the fighting to “a state of war.”
A senior military official in Sanaa said in a statement that the rebels “are continuing to battle the military at Malaheez, Sufyan and Bakem.”
Earlier a rebel spokesman told al-Jazeera TV of the government’s conditions for a ceasefire that “we are ready to examine them, and that is natural.”
Mohammed Abdelsalam said the group had already made known its “commitment to a return to the situation as it was — opening roads, pulling out of our positions and the return of the local authorities.”
“We do not wish to keep holding our detainees despite the fact that those in power are holding on to their prisoners, in some cases for more than four years,” he said.
The army launched operation Scorched Earth on Aug. 11, and relief groups warned of worsening humanitarian conditions among the tens of thousands of civilians forced from their homes by the fighting.
The UN estimates that some 150,000 people have been displaced since 2004 by persistent instability in the north.
The government accuses the rebels of seeking to restore the Zaidi Shiite imamate, which was overthrown in a 1962 coup that sparked eight years of civil war.
An offshoot of Shiite Islam, the Zaidis are a minority in mainly Sunni Yemen but the majority community in the north. They are also known as Huthis after their late leader, Hussein Badr Eddin al-Huthi, who was killed in 2004.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS