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Saudi Forces Agree to Halt in Yemen War Saudi Forces Agree to Halt in Yemen War
(about 5 hours later)
SANA, Yemen — A Saudi-led military coalition announced on Saturday that a five-day humanitarian cease-fire would take effect in Yemen starting Sunday evening at the request of Yemen’s exiled president. SANA, Yemen — Saudi Arabia said Saturday that it would halt its military offensive in Yemen for five days to allow the distribution of humanitarian relief supplies, according to a statement carried by the official Saudi news agency.
Coalition forces have been bombing Shiite Houthi rebels and army forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh since March, aiming to push them back from southern and central areas and restore the country’s exiled president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi. A Saudi-led military force has been bombing Yemen since late March in order to defeat the Houthis, a rebel group that drove Yemen’s Saudi-backed government from power this year and controls substantial territory.
News of the cease-fire came after at least 80 people were killed and at least 150 were wounded in an airstrike in the central Yemeni province of Taiz on Saturday. A weeklong truce brokered by the United Nations failed earlier this month after Saudi Arabia said it had not been asked by Mr. Hadi, in whose name it is acting, to stop its raids. The truce announcement came a day after the Saudi-led coalition was accused of being responsible for killing more than 100 civilians in air attacks, one of the highest death tolls of the war. Witnesses and medical officials said a series of airstrikes late Friday slammed into residential compounds for workers at an electricity plant in the coastal city of Mokha, killing the civilians.
A letter to the Saudi king on Friday from Mr. Hadi, who fled to Saudi Arabia to escape the advancing Houthi rebels, asked for the cease-fire to allow for humanitarian supplies to be delivered to Yemen, the state news agency SPA said. The Saudis had refused to abide by a previous cease-fire two weeks ago that was brokered by the United Nations and would have halted the fighting during the holy month of Ramadan. Saudi officials said at the time that they had received no formal request to stop fighting from Yemen’s exiled president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
The latest cease-fire announcement says that coalition forces will stop all military activities, but reserve the right to respond to violations by the rebels and pro-Saleh forces. Their change of heart on Saturday appeared to reflect the Saudis’ rapidly improving fortunes in the war. Last week, local militiamen and other fighters backed by the Saudis drove the Houthis from most of the southern Yemeni city of Aden, giving the coalition its first significant victory as well as a beachhead that could be used to broaden the offensive.
The Saba news agency in Yemen said that according to a source in Taiz, the bombing had targeted the Mokha area inhabited mostly by engineers and workers for a power station and some displaced families. More than 1,700 civilians have been killed in Yemen since the war began four months ago, including hundreds by coalition bombs.
The front lines of Yemen’s war shifted in favor of the Saudi-led coalition earlier this month when, in coordination with forces loyal to Mr. Hadi, they managed to drive the Houthis out of the southern port city of Aden and much of the surrounding areas. The compounds that were bombed on Friday housed more than 1,300 people, according to Abdullah Al-Fadhli, a local council member in Mokha. At least eight airstrikes hit the buildings — with some of the bombs killing rescue workers who responded to the first strikes, he said.
Since then, warplanes have been landing in Aden’s airport carrying equipment necessary to help reopen the airport, which had been shut down by the fighting.
Aden and the other southern provinces have been largely inaccessible to United Nations workers seeking to deliver food, and about 13 million people are thought to be in dire need of it.