UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for international action to end the Saudi-led air campaign against Shiite Houthi rebels as intense bombing hit Yemen again on Friday and al-Qaeda seized more ground in the chaos.
Columns of smoke rose over an arms depot targeted by warplanes east of the capital, Sana’a, witnesses said.
The facility belonged to the elite Republican Guard, which remains loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Photo: EPA
Renegade troops loyal to Saleh are allied with Houthi fighters, whose sweeping advance forced Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee to Riyadh last month.
Following heavy overnight airstrikes in the north, coalition aircraft also hit the presidential palace in the southern city of Taez, the witnesses said.
Coalition spokesman Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri said that “from this afternoon we have started operations in Taez.”
Speaking in Riyadh, he added that there had been 100 sorties in Yemen on Thursday, indicating there is no end in sight to the operation.
“This works needs patience, persistence and precision. We are not in a hurry... We have the time and we have the capabilities,” he said.
Airstrikes on the southern port city of Aden killed a rebel, while at least 76 people died in bombing and fighting around Aden and Taez, officials said.
The UN said hundreds of people have died and thousands of families fled their homes in the war, which has also killed six Saudi security personnel in border skirmishes.
Ban called for an immediate ceasefire, saying the nation was “in flames” and all sides must return to political negotiations.
His remarks followed the resignation of UN envoy to Yemen Jamal Benomar, who said he wanted to move on to a new assignment, but diplomats said that he had lost the support of Yemen’s exiled president and Gulf nations.
Saudi Arabia and its neighbors accuse Benomar of being duped by the Houthis, who took part in peace negotiations as they pushed an offensive.
The Moroccan diplomat had been instrumental in negotiating a deal that eased Saleh from office in February 2012 after a year of protests against his three-decade rule.
Saudi Arabia’s regional rival, Iran, presented a four-point peace plan on Friday to Ban.
The plan calls for a ceasefire and immediate end to all foreign military attacks, the urgent delivery of humanitarian and medical aid, a resumption of political talks and the formation of a national unity government.
“It is imperative for the international community to get more effectively involved in ending the senseless aerial attacks and establishing a ceasefire,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote, adding that “the only way to restore peace and stability is to allow all Yemeni parties to establish, without any foreign interference, their own inclusive national unity government.”
The Yemen conflict has sent tensions soaring between Saudi Arabia and Iran — the foremost Sunni and Shiite Muslim powers in the Middle East.
Tehran is a key ally of the Houthis but denies arming them.
“This is not true,” Iranian media outlets on Friday reported Revolutionary Guards deputy commander Hossein Salami as saying.
Yemen has sunk further into chaos since the start of the air raids, most of which Western diplomats said have been carried out by Saudi Arabia itself.
Yemen is a front line in the US war on al-Qaeda, which has exploited the growing turmoil to expand its control of areas in the southeast of the deeply tribal nation.
On Friday, al-Qaeda overran a key army camp in the Hadramawt provincial capital Mukalla, seizing heavy weapons and consolidating its grip on the city, an official said.
Residents confirmed that the camp, which had remained loyal to Hadi, was taken “without resistance.”
Despite the collapse of Hadi’s government in Yemen, Washington has vowed to carry on its campaign against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Two suspected al-Qaeda militants were killed in an apparent US drone strike in the southern province of Shabwa overnight, a tribal source said.
The WHO, said 767 people have died in the war since March 19 and more than 2,900 have been wounded. The majority have been civilians.
The UN launched an urgent appeal for US$274 million to provide emergency aid for what was already the region’s poorest nation.
“Ordinary families are struggling to access healthcare, water, food and fuel — basic requirements for their survival,” UN humanitarian coordinator in Yemen Johannes Van Der Klaauw said.
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