Cairo: A five-day humanitarian truce in Yemen appeared to be broadly holding on Wednesday, despite reports of air strikes overnight by Saudi-led forces and continued military operations by the country’s dominant Iranian-allied Al Houthi militants in the east.
Witnesses in the southwestern city of Abyan said air strikes hit Al Houthi positions there after they seized the area for hours after the pause began at 11 p.m. (2000 GMT).
Residents of the southern provinces of Shabwa and Lahj, which have also witnessed heavy ground clashes between local militiamen and Al Houthis, also reported air strikes overnight.
At least 35 civilians were killed by Saudi-led air strikes on cities of Abs and Zabeed in western Yemen on Tuesday, residents said, before the beginning of the ceasefire that is intended to ward off a humanitarian catastrophe.
Seeking to restore exiled President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, an alliance of Gulf Arab nations has since March 26 been bombing Al Houthi militia and allied army units that control much of Yemen.
Saudi Arabia and its allies believe Al Houthis are a proxy for Iran.
Saudi state television quoted an official source at the Defence Ministry as saying projectiles had fallen on the Najran and Jizan areas on Wednesday morning and that some sniper fire by Al Houthis had been detected. There were no casualties.
“The position adopted by the armed forces was to exercise restraint, abiding by the humanitarian truce approved by the coalition forces,” the television quoted the official as saying.
The truce is meant to allow in aid and medicine to Yemen, where 828 civilians, including 182 children, have been killed since March 26, according to the United Nations.
The Saudi state news agency SPA said King Salman, at a royal court ceremony attended by Hadi and his Prime Minister Khaled Bahah, authorised the laying of the foundation stone for a humanitarian relief centre.
The Saudi-owned Al Arabiya channel said the monarch had allocated one billion riyals ($265 million) to the Yemen relief work, in additional to a similar amount he had pledged earlier.
Meanwhile, a senior Iranian commander warned the United States that a “fire might start” over an aid ship bound for Yemen on Wednesday after the Pentagon urged it to change course.
Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri said it was Iran’s right to deliver relief supplies to Yemen as a humanitarian ceasefire takes hold and rejected Washington’s request that aid be taken instead to a United Nations hub to allay worries the cargo might be military.
“I should say frankly that Iran’s restraint has a limit,” Jazayeri, a deputy chief of staff, told Iran’s Arab-language Al-Alam television late on Tuesday.
“Saudi Arabia and the Americans and others should know if they continue to create obstacles on Iran’s aid delivery a fire might start that would definitely be out of their control.
“My strict recommendation is that they let Iran and other countries deliver their humanitarian aid to Yemen.”
The Pentagon said Tuesday it was tracking the aid ship, named Iran Shahed, after a naval commander told state media that Tehran would send warships to escort it to Yemen.
Spokesman Colonel Steven Warren called for the ship to divert to Djibouti, where the UN has set up an aid hub across the narrow strait that separates Yemen from the Horn of Africa, to prove that its cargo was humanitarian.
“The Iranians have stated that this is humanitarian aid,” Warren told reporters in Washington.
“If that is the case, then we certainly encourage the Iranians to deliver that humanitarian aid to the United Nations humanitarian aid distribution hub, which has been established in Djibouti.”
