Yemeni Vice President Khaled Bahah, a politician respected across the country’s spectrum of factions, called on Houthi forces to stop advances on cities and heed a UN Security Council demand for an end to fighting, local media reported.
Baha’s comments, made during a visit to the Yemeni embassy in Saudi Arabia on Monday, coincided with air strikes by a Saudi-led alliance on Iran-allied Houthi fighters, intensified fighting and reports the humanitarian situation was worsening.
“The brothers in Ansarullah are called on to fear God with the Yemeni people and stop their war on the cities,” Yemeni news Web site voice-yemen.com reported, referring to the Shiite Muslim Houthi group by its official name.
Photo: AP
“Everybody must realize that the UN Security Council resolution 2216 created a framework to end the conflict and that any initiative or dialogue would be for a mechanism to implement this resolution,” he added.
The Houthis have rejected the resolution, which imposes an arms embargo on the group and on supporters of former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh and demands the Ansarullah group drop its weapons and quit cities, including the capital, Sana’a, it captured since September last year.
Other Yemeni news Web sites also carried the remarks.
A coalition of Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia is trying to stop Houthi fighters and Saleh loyalists taking control of Yemen. The fighting has killed more than 1,000 people in the five weeks since the air campaign began on March 26.
Saudi Arabia announced a halt to the air campaign last week to allow for political solution, but fighting has intensified again since Sunday.
Residents said that heavy clashes were reported overnight in the oil-producing Marib Province east of Sana’a and in the strategic central city of Taiz and in Aden.
They said a large number of casualties were reported in Marib, where tribal fighters allied with Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi confronted Houthi militiamen and troops loyal to former Saleh, but no exact figures were immediately available.
Medical and security sources yesterday said that at least 20 people were killed in heavy fighting in Aden.
Forces loyal to Hadi were pushed back in the city’s central Khor Maksar district as the rebels overran Hadi’s family home and the German and Russian consulates, a local official said.
A spokesman for the pro-rebel armed forces said that 112 soldiers, 43 policemen and 45 Houthi militia had been killed in five weeks of coalition air strikes.
The rebels have said they will not return to UN-brokered peace talks until the air strikes end.
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