Dubai: Saudi-led air strikes pounded the rebel-held Yemeni capital Sana’a on Tuesday just hours before a five-day humanitarian ceasefire was set to begin.
Looking to prepare for the truce and jumpstart stalled political talks among Yemen’s civil war factions, the new UN
envoy to the country arrived in Sana’a, saying fighting would not resolve a conflict that crosses ethnic and religious faultlines.
“We are convinced there is no solution to Yemen’s problem except through a dialogue, which must be Yemeni,” the envoy, Mauritanian diplomat Esmail Ould Shaikh Ahmad, was quoted as saying by the local Saba news agency.
Saudi-led air strikes on a rocket base in Sana’a on Monday killed 90 people and wounded 300, a local official was quoted as telling Saba. If confirmed, the death toll would be among the highest in a single bombing incident throughout Yemen’s war.
Sana’a residents said there were three air strikes on a base for army contingents aligned with the Al Houthis in the north of the capital on Tuesday, sending up a column of smoke.
The ceasefire was set to take effect at 11pm (2000 GMT) to allow the shipment of food and medicine to the blockaded country, which aid groups warn faces a humanitarian catastrophe.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al Jubeir was quoted as saying on Monday that the truce in Yemen may be extended if “(aid deliveries) succeeded and if Al Houthis and their allies don’t engage in hostile activities”.
Adrian Edwards, a spokesman for UN refugee agency UNHCR, said planes were poised to take off bearing 300 tonnes of sleeping mats, blankets and tent material.
“The UNHCR is making final preparations for a huge airlift of humanitarian aid into Yemen’s Sana’a, to take place over the next days if today’s proposed ceasefire comes into effect and holds,” he told a briefing in Geneva.
As the ceasefire neared, witnesses said the Saudi-led alliance bombed Al Houthi positions in the southern port of Aden, where local armed groups were still fighting the rebels.
Locals said four Aden residents were killed in Al Houthi shelling, while four anti-Al Houthi militiamen operating a tank were killed in an Arab air strike — one of the first reported incidents of friendly fire since the campaign began.
On Monday, Al Houthis and Saudi forces exchanged heavy artillery fire along the two countries’ rugged desert border.
As of Wednesday, the UN agency OCHA said 1,527 people have died in the Arabian Peninsula country’s conflict, among them 646 civilians, and 6,266 have been wounded.
Meanwhile, the Moroccan army said on Tuesday it was unable to verify the authenticity of the images of one of its F-16 fighter jets that was downed in Yemen on Sunday, MAP news agency reported.
“Following the statement issued on May 10, 2015 on the loss in Yemen of an F-16 of the Royal Armed Forces (FAR), numerous images were spread on websites and social networks purporting pieces claiming to be components of the fuselage or the body of the pilot,” FAR said in a statement.
It said that the authentication of the photos and confirmation of reports of the death of the pilot has been “made difficult by the fact that the site of the crash lies in enemy territory”.
