Saudi rockets kill Shia civilians in N Yemen

Saudi military has reportedly killed several civilians in its latest round of land and air attacks on the Shia-populated northern Yemen.

The mortalities included several children, said the Shia Houthi fighters who have been resisting fierce state-led offensives as well as attacks by Saudi armed forces in the northwestern Sa'ada province.

Reporting on the conflict on their website, the resistance fighters said they had foiled a Saudi incursion into northern Yemen. The Saudi soldiers then reacted by firing a dozen rockets at villages at Mount Al-Dukhan and surrounding areas.

The Saudi shelling continued overnight, according to the source.

The fighters are accused by the government of seeking to reestablish a clerical rule, overthrown in a 1962 coup, a charge rejected by the Shia resistance, who maintain that the central government is widely corrupt and bent on violating their basic civil rights.

Riyadh, which has recently joined the offensives against the Houthis by Sana'a, has also claimed that the fighters had attacked one of its border checkpoints.

The Houthis, on the other hand, condemn the government's armed campaign as a marginalization attempt which is backed by the Saudi-backed Wahhabi extremists.

Wahhabism, an extremely intolerant interpretation of Islam, is the official religion in Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom has been facing criticism from its own Shia population over the widespread discrimination against them.

The Saudi Wahhabism, also known as Salafism, has been accused of fueling and funding terrorism against Shia Muslims as well as others across the world.

On Friday, the Human Rights Watch, an international rights group, voiced concern over the civilians caught in the north Yemen conflict.

Raising the prospects of a humanitarian crisis in the violence-torn area, the UN figures indicate that the offensives have displaced some 175,000 civilians who suffer from severe malnutrition.

The Al-Mazraq camp in the western Yemeni province of Hajjah, south of Sa'ada, receives more than 900 new refugees every day.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=113014§ionid=351020206.