Saudi city soldiers on as civilian toll mounts – Houthis say ready for fresh Yemen talks if attacks stop

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Saudis walk past wreckages at a market for vehicles on Aug 27, in the Saudi border city of Najran, a week after it was struck by a rocket fired from Yemen.
Saudis walk past wreckages at a market for vehicles on Aug 27, in the Saudi border city of Najran, a week after it was struck by a rocket fired from Yemen.

SANAA, Aug 28, (Agencies): Yemen’s Houthi-run governing council said on Sunday it was ready to restart peace talks with the country’s exiled government provided a Saudi-led coalition stopped attacking and besieging Houthi-held territories. UK-sponsored negotiations to end 18 months of fighting in the impoverished country on Saudi Arabia’s southern border collapsed earlier this month and the dominant Iran-allied Houthi movement there resumed shelling attacks into the kingdom. At its weekly meeting at Sanaa’s presidential palace, the council said that its willingness to restart peace talks was contingent on the “total cessation of the aggression and lifting of the unjust siege on the Yemeni people”. Warplanes from the Saudi-led coalition struck a rebel convoy near a taxi stand in central Yemen, killing seven civilians and nine insurgents, officials said on Sunday.

The air strikes hit three vehicles belonging to the Houthi rebels late Saturday near the Mafraq Sharab junction outside the southwestern city of Taez, a military official said. Medical sources said hospitals in Taez received the bodies of seven civilians, while military sources said nine rebels were killed and 14 people were wounded.

The raid came during sporadic clashes in the city between the Iran-backed rebels and forces loyal to President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi who are supported by a Saudi-led coalition. The Arab coalition launched a military campaign against the Houthis and their allies in March 2015, after the Shiite rebels closed in on Hadi in his southern refuge in Aden forcing him into exile. The coalition has stepped up its air raids since three months of peace talks in Kuwait collapsed earlier this month. Yemen’s exiled government has said it welcomes in principle a US-backed plan to resume peace talks with Iran-backed rebels on the basis of forming a unity government. At a meeting in Riyadh, the cabinet gave an “initial welcoming to the ideas that came out of the meeting in Jeddah,” which included US Secretary of State John Kerry, the government’s sabanew. net website said late Saturday.

Kerry announced a fresh international peace initiative to resolve the 17-monthold conflict after meeting Thursday with Gulf counterparts, a British minister and the UN envoy to Yemen. The plan offers Houthi rebels and their allies participation in a unity government but demands their withdrawal from Sanaa and other key areas, as well as surrendering heavy weapons to a third party. The rebels had been demanding a unity government as the first step towards resolving Yemen’s war. But the internationally backed government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi wanted a rebel pullout from seized territory, including the capital, and a surrender of weapons, as the first steps, in line with a UN Security Council resolution on the crisis.

On Saturday, the government stressed its “readiness to positively deal with any peaceful solutions”. But it said any proposal should comply with UN Resolution 2216, sabanew.net reported. A foreign ministry official said Yemen has not officially received the new initiative, adding that UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed was tasked with delivering it to warring parties. UN-sponsored talks in Kuwait collapsed in early August after three months. Kerry said on Thursday that Yemen’s war “needs to end as quickly as possible”. A Saudi-led coalition launched a military campaign in March 2015 against the rebels in support of Hadi who was holed in his refuge in Aden before being forced into exile.

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