Yemen willing to halt offensive if rebels agree to stand down

Government says offer aimed at facilitating humanitarian work

SANAA: Yemen said on Friday it would suspend operations against rebels in the north of the country to allow access for aid groups if the Shiite rebels also agreed to stop fighting. “The government sees no problem with suspending operations as of 9 p.m. Friday evening,” a spokesman of the Supreme Security Committee said in a statement on the ruling party website September 26.

It said the ceasefire was conditional on the rebel movement doing the same and did not specify a time frame for the stop.

There was no immediate res­ponse from the rebels.

Both sides have previously rejected ceasefire offers by the other party.

“[This is] in response to the calls of international aid organizations and the demands of men and women in Saada so that those displaced in camps because of the strife caused by the subversives and rebels receive supplies,” it said.

Last month fresh fighting erupted between Zaydi Shiite Muslims in the Saada region and government forces trying to impose central authority.

The conflict in Yemen first broke out in 2004.

UN aid agencies say over 100,000 people, many of them children, have fled their homes during the surge in fighting.

They launched an appeal in Geneva this week for $23.5 million to help Yemen. Thousands are thought to be staying in tented camps.

Information about the conduct of the war has been hard to verify since northern provinces have been closed to media.

Earlier on Friday each side traded claims over the fighting in the mountainous territory bordering Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil producer.

A government military statement said the army had killed three rebel leaders and deployed a unit of snipers.

“Leaders of the rebellion, among the most dangerous terrorist elements, were killed” in the attack at Malaheez, Yemen’s official Saba news agency cited the statement as saying.

The report identified the men as Jarallah Mohammad Ismail, Ali Abd Rabbo Jabal and Abdel Aziz al-Uraimi.

Since August 11, government forces have been waging operation “Scorched Earth” against the Zaydi rebels.

The rebels told AFP in a statement on Friday that they were ready to cooperate with a United Nations plan for a “humanitarian corridor” to allow aid into the areas where fighting was taking place.

The army said it had sent elite marksmen to the conflict zones and this “has inflicted enormous losses” on the rebels.

Friday’s assault destroyed or damaged several vehicles delivering weapons and food to the rebels’ mountain strongholds in Saada Province, and government forces removed barriers the rebels had put across main roads to halt the army’s advance, the statement added.

In a video clip broadcast by Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television, the Yemeni rebels accused neighboring Saudi Arabia of providing military support to Sanaa.

In the footage, the authenticity of which cannot be confirmed, an unidentified person says rebels have seized weapons and ammunition abandoned by government forces near Malaheez and “most, including shells, are Saudi.”

He shows a weapon appearing to carry an emblem of the Saudi kingdom.

The Sanaa government last week rebuffed rebel claims that Saudi warplanes had helped in the military offensive by launching several bombing runs over Malaheez.

Thousands of people have been killed and the UNHCR es­timates 150,000 have been displaced over the past five years.

UNHCR has said Saada city is practically cut off from the outside world, and called for humanitarian corridors to allow people out and aid in.

“The situation is deteriorating by the day,” a spokesman said on August 26, estimating that more than 35,000 people have been displaced by the latest outbreak of violence that has afflicted the province sporadically since 2004.

The government is also confronted by a growing separatist mood in the former South Yemen, and the impoverished country is increasingly being used as base by Al-Qaeda, taking advantage of the rugged terrain.