Saudi king doubles Yemen aid pledge to $540 million
A five-day truce in Yemen appeared to be broadly holding on Wednesday, despite reports of air strikes overnight by Saudi-led forces and continued military activity by the country’s dominant Houthi group.
Rockets hit border areas in Saudi Arabia from Yemen’s rebel-held north, a Saudi defence ministry official said. “At 10:00 am (0700 GMT) on Wednesday, rockets fell on the regions of Najran and Jazan, and (rebel) Houthi militia sniper fire was detected, but there were no casualties,” said the official quoted by the Saudi Press Agency.
Saudi armed forces “practised self-restraint as part of their commitment to the humanitarian truce which was decided by coalition forces,” the official said.
“We are committed to respect this [ceasefire],” coalition spokesman Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri had said, but the coalition would continue its “intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance” in case it had to respond, he added.
“We will be ready to react to any violation of the pause,” Assiri told AFP.
Witnesses in the southwestern city of Abyan said warplanes had hit positions there after the Houthis seized the area following the start late on Tuesday of the ceasefire, which is intended to ward off a humanitarian catastrophe.
Residents of the southern provinces of Shabwa and Lahj, which have witnessed heavy ground clashes between local militiamen and the Houthis, also reported air strikes overnight.
At least 35 civilians were killed by the Saudi-led attacks on the cities of Abs and Zabeed in western Yemen on Tuesday, residents said, before the beginning of the ceasefire.
Seeking to restore exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, an alliance of Gulf Arab nations has since March 26 been bombing Houthi militia and allied army units that control much of Yemen.
In the bulwark of opposition to the Houthis in the southern city of Aden, the scale of over six weeks of clashes emerged.
Over 600 people had been killed and 3,000 had been wounded, while 22,000 residents had been displaced since the Houthis first pushed into the city on March 25, local watchdog group, the Aden Centre for Monitoring, said on Wednesday.
Residents expressed doubts that the break in fighting, which paused round-the-clock gunfire that had defined Aden life in recent weeks, would last.
“Aden needs a humanitarian truce so badly, given the lack of food, fuel and everything else. But we question the intentions of the Houthis and believe they will take advantage of the truce to take more areas,” resident Hassan al-Jamal said.
Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Muslim allies believe the Houthis are a proxy for Iran in a regional power struggle that has exacerbated sectarian tensions across the Middle East.
Just before the five-day pause took effect at 2000 GMT on Tuesday night, the coalition warned Yemen’s Iran-backed rebels it would strike back at any violation.
SAUDI AID PLEDGE:
Meanwhile, King Salman doubled Saudi Arabia’s Yemen aid commitment to $540 million on the first day of the humanitarian ceasefire.
“We announce that we are setting aside one billion riyals ($266m) for aid and humanitarian operations … In addition to more than one billion riyals ($274m) we had already pledged,” the official Saudi Press Agency quoted the king as saying.
On April 18, the kingdom announced it would fund the entire $274m sought by the United Nations in an appeal for emergency assistance to help victims of the war in Yemen.
The UN said the money would “meet the life-saving and protection needs of 7.5m people affected” by a deepening humanitarian crisis in Yemen.
“Projects and partners have been identified for implementation of the grant but money has not been disbursed yet, so it is still a pledge,” Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said on Tuesday.