Nearly 100 people were killed on Monday in airstrikes across Yemen, the nation’s state news agency reported, as a Saudi-led coalition stepped up attacks that are likely to weigh on efforts to broker a humanitarian truce.
The UN has been pushing for a halt to the air strikes and fighting that have killed nearly 3,000 people in Yemen since March when the Saudi-led coalition intervened against the Iranian-backed Houthi forces to try to restore exiled Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Yemen’s Saba news agency said 54 people had been killed in a series of raids in Amran Province, north of the capital, Sana’a, including 40 who had been shopping at a market in Eyal Yazeed District.
Photo: AFP
It said a number of women and children were among the dead.
Saba said Saudi-led war planes also killed more than 40 people in a raid on a livestock market in the town of al-Foyoush in southern Yemen.
Local residents also reported 30 deaths in a raid they said apparently targeted a Houthi checkpoint on a main road between Aden and Lahj. They said 10 of the dead were Houthi fighters.
A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition could not immediately be reached for comment, but a spokesman previously said the coalition does not target civilians.
UN special envoy to Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed held talks with officials from the dominant Houthi group to try to broker a ceasefire to allow aid supplies to be delivered.
The Yemeni government, exiled in Riyadh, said consultations were being held on implementing an April UN resolution calling for the Houthis to quit cities seized since September last year and for aid supplies to be sent to stricken Yemeni civilians.
“We are now in consultations for guarantees to ensure the success of the truce. The mechanism we presented to implement [the UN resolution] demanded real guarantees to ensure aid is delivered to those who need it,” Hadi spokesman Rajeh Badi said, adding that talks were underway to “lift the deliberate siege on Aden, Taiz, Lahj and Dhalea.”
Major cities in central and southern Yemen have been racked by heavy fighting between the Houthis and a patchwork of military, regional and tribal forces allied with Hadi.
Badi said a sought-after “humanitarian pause” would last until the end of the three-day Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, expected to start on July 17.
The Houthis have also signaled readiness to honor a truce.
The intensive diplomacy came amid a growing outcry over the deteriorating humanitarian situation after more than three months of air strikes on the impoverished nation prompted by the Houthi advance south on an area controlled by Hadi’s government.
Saudi Arabia sees the Houthis as proxies for arch-rival Iran, which they accuse of trying to expand its influence in Riyadh’s immediate backyard.
The UN last week designated the war in Yemen as a Level 3 humanitarian crisis, its most severe category, and the US and the EU have endorsed calls for a humanitarian suspension of hostilities.
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