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 A Saudi-led coalition of Arab states has been bombing Houthi
forces, the strongest faction in Yemen's civil war, for over two
months in an attempt to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi,
who has fled to Saudi Arabia. Around 2,000 people have been killed
and half a million displaced by the fighting.
Coalition Arab bombings killed around 58 people across Yemen on
Wednesday and Thursday, the state news agency Saba, controlled by
the Houthis, said.
48 people, most of them women and children, were killed in air
strikes on their houses in the Houthi heartland in the rural far
north adjoining Saudi Arabia.
The reports could not be independently verified.
The U.N. envoy to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, has for weeks
been shuttling between the Houthi-controlled capital, the exiled
government in Riyadh and other regional capitals to garner support
for peace talks in Geneva.
Daifallah al-Shami, a member of the Houthis' politburo, told Reuters
his movement would take part, and "supports without preconditions
the efforts of the United Nations to organize Yemeni-Yemeni
dialogue".
Both sides appeared to have relaxed their conditions for opening the
talks.
Hadi had previously insisted that the Houthis obey U.N. Security
Council Resolution 2216, passed in April, which required them to
recognize his administration and quit Yemen's main cities. The
Houthis for their part had sought a suspension of the bombing raids.
Yemeni politicians say representatives of long-time president Ali
Abdullah Saleh will also accept a U.N. invitation to the talks, but
that southern rebel factions, who also control swathes of Yemen, are
unlikely to be invited.
"REVOLUTION"
The Houthis, who seized the capital Sanaa last September and now
control much of the country with the help of forces loyal to Saleh,
say they are part of a "revolution" against corruption.
Saudi Arabia and allied Sunni Muslim states fear that the Houthis,
who hail from a Shi'ite sect, will spread the influence of the Gulf
states' Shi'ite arch-rival Iran in the Arabian Peninsula.
The foreign minister of one of those allies, Qatar, told Reuters in
Paris that the armed intervention had prevented a Houthi takeover.
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"If there had not been (Operation) Decisive Storm, we would have
seen the Houthis and Ali Abdullah Saleh's people all over Yemen,"
Khaled al-Attiyah said. "I think Decisive Storm ... has restored
legitimacy in Yemen.
"Is it enough or not? I think it will be enough when the Houthis and
Saleh's followers fulfill the elements of 2216."
Overnight, around 12 air raids hit weapons stores around the
presidential palace in Sanaa, according to a Reuters witness,
triggering secondary blasts that lit up the night sky.
Air strikes also hit a naval base and Yemen's naval command in the
Red Sea port city of Hodaida, residents said, and the state news
agency Saba said six people were killed.
Saudi shelling also hit the main border crossing from Saudi Arabia,
the world's top oil exporter, in the far northern province of
Haradh, demolishing Yemeni customs offices.
In the southern city of Aden, a bastion of support for Hadi and
scene of street clashes, air raids hit Houthi positions in the
northern suburbs on Thursday.
Local fighters in the city and in a tangled battle line stretching
through Yemen's south oppose the Houthis, but many support eventual
independence for South Yemen, which was forced to unify with the
north, under Saleh, in a 1994 civil war.
(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols at the United Nations;
Writing by Noah Browning; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Toby Chopra)
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