Saudi-led warplanes bombed elite Republican Guard forces allied with the dominant Houthi faction in Yemen’s civil war yesterday, residents said, as UN diplomats in Geneva struggled to nudge the various sides toward a ceasefire deal.
More than 2,600 people have been killed since an Arab alliance led by Saudi Arabia launched air strikes to try to stop the Iranian-backed Houthis from completing a takeover of Yemen and to try to reinstate exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Residents said they heard three air raids on the al-Sawad camp, in a southern suburb of the capital Sanaa where the command of the Republican Guards allied with former president Ali Abdullah Saleh and the Houthis is based, early yesterday.
Three air strikes were also reported in the Khawlan region, southeast of Sanaa, six on a camp that houses the Houthi-allied 115th Infantry Brigade in the al-Hazm district of al-Jouf province, and three more on Houthi positions on the outskirts of the embattled southern port city of Aden.
In Geneva, UN special envoy to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, pressed on with shuttle diplomacy to try to coax Yemeni factions, including representatives of the Houthis, Saleh’s General People’s Congress party and Hadi’s allies, toward agreeing conditions for a ceasefire.
They have so far refused to sit at the same table and continued yesterday to show no inclination for compromise.
Hadi’s government has demanded that the Houthis quit cities seized since last September as a precondition for a ceasefire.
Yahya Duwaid of Saleh’s General People’s Congress said:
“We had reason to be hopeful and optimistic for the meetings today, and we listened to the UN proposals today, but unfortunately, what they were proposing was not of the standard that we were looking for.”
UN spokesman Ahmed Fawzi said Hadi’s exiled government delegation was currently booked to fly out of Geneva on Saturday and the Houthi delegates on Sunday, but the talks could be extended before then. “He (Ould Sheikh Ahmed) is working very hard to reach (a truce) so that we can also agree a mechanism not only to monitor the cessation but to deliver aid as quickly as possible.”
