Despite declared ceasefire, Saudi Arabia launches missile, artillery strikes, causes casualties in Yemen

Saudi Arabia has launched missile and artillery strikes against Yemen’s northwestern province of Sa’ada, leaving a number of civilians injured, hours after an alleged ceasefire announced by the Riyadh-led coalition came into effect.

Ansarullah website cited a Yemeni security source as saying that the Saudi forces fired many artillery shells and missiles at residential areas in the border district of Shada in Sa’ada on Wednesday, injuring five people.

The source condemned the ongoing Saudi attacks on border areas, stressing that “these crimes reveal the falseness of the Saudi regime’s claims that call for peace.”

Late on Tuesday, the Saudi-led coalition announced a ceasefire and said it would take effect as of Wednesday morning.

The coalition’s spokesman Brigadier General Turki al-Malki said the truce “coincides with the launch of Yemeni-Yemeni consultations [in Riyadh] with the aim of creating the appropriate conditions for their success and creating a positive environment during the holy month of Ramadan for peace making in Yemen.”

Saudi-led coalition says ‘will halt Yemen attacks on Wednesday’

Saudi-led coalition claims it will halt its attacks on Yemen on Wednesday.

Ansarullah has shunned the meeting in Riyadh that is hosted by the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council and involves representatives from the Saudi-backed administration of Yemen's fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi as well as US Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking. The Yemeni resistance movement says it won’t travel to enemy territory for talks.

A senior member of Yemen’s popular Ansarullah resistance movement on Wednesday dismissed the Saudi-led coalition’s announcement that it would halt military operations during Ramadan, stating that the measure is utterly meaningless as long as the brutal siege against the impoverished country is in full effect.

The Saudi-led coalition’s truce came after the Ansarullah leader urged the Riyadh regime to seize on his group’s ceasefire to immediately stop its aerial attacks and crippling siege against Yemen.

“There is no chance for the countries waging aggression against Yemen to escape our retaliatory attacks, and get out of the current predicament unless they end the onslaught, lift the all-out blockade and end occupation,” Abdul-Malik al-Houthi said on Monday evening.

Chairman of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council Mahdi al-Mashat on Saturday evening announced the suspension of retaliatory missile and drone attacks and all military actions against Saudi Arabia for a period of three days.

Saudi Arabia launched the devastating war against Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with a number of its allies, chief among them the United Arab Emirates, and with arms and logistics support from the US and several Western states.

The objective was to bring back to power the former Riyadh-backed regime and crush the popular Ansarullah resistance movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of an effective government in Yemen.

The war has stopped well short of all of its goals, despite killing hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and turning the entire country into the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

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