| Washington Post | - |
SANAA,
Yemen - Saudi-led coalition airstrikes targeting Shiite rebels have
resumed in the southern port city of Aden after the end of a five-day
humanitarian cease-fire, Yemeni security officials and witnesses said
early Monday.
Saudi-led airstrikes begin again as cease-fire ends in Yemen
Yemen's Vice President and Prime Minister Khaled Bahah talks to the media during the opening of multinational talks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, about Yemen’s future. (Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images)
The cease-fire expired at 11 p.m. Sunday (4 p.m. Eastern time), and coalition airstrikes hit rebel positions and tanks in several neighborhoods of Aden, the officials said. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, and the witnesses spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals.
The cease-fire hadn’t stopped all fighting in Yemen between the Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, and those opposing them.
Earlier Sunday, hundreds of Yemeni politicians and tribal leaders began talks in Saudi Arabia on the future of their war-torn country, although the Houthis were not taking part.
The Houthis have rejected the main aim of the three-day talks — the restoration of Yemen’s exiled president — and the location of the negotiations in Saudi Arabia. The absence of the Houthis means the national dialogue is unlikely to end the violence, which included the rebels seizing the capital, Sanaa, in September and ultimately forcing President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi into exile.
A
Yemen boy, right, sells fruits on a street in Taiz, Yemen, on May 17
before the expiration of the cease-fire. (Abdulnasser Alseddik/AP) Since late March, Saudi Arabia has led airstrikes against the Houthis and allied military units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. The air campaign is aimed at weakening the Houthis and restoring Hadi, who fled the country in March in the face of a rebel advance.
“This conference taking place today is in support of politics and community, and rejects the coup,” Hadi told the gathering.
He urged a return to the political road map through which Saleh stepped down after more than three decades in power following a 2011 Arab Spring-inspired uprising. Saleh’s ouster and the road map was backed and overseen by the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, which is based in Saudi Arabia, as well as the United Nations and the United States.
Yemen’s conflict has killed more than 1,400 people — many of them civilians — since March 19, according to the United Nations. The country of about 25 million people has endured shortages of food, water, medicine and electricity as a result of a Saudi-led blockade. Humanitarian organizations had been scrambling to distribute aid before the end of the truce.
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