UN Monitor of Yemen’s Truce Exited Agreed Path: Houthis

Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement has boycotted a United Nations (UN)-led ceasefire monitoring team in the war-ravaged country’s flashpoint city of Hudaydah, accusing the head of the team of pursuing “other agendas.”

Houthis’ chief negotiator, Mohammed Abdulsalam, made the remarks on Twitter on Sunday, saying that retired Dutch Major General Patrick Cammaert, who was to chair the meeting, had “exited from the course of the agreement by implementing other agendas.”

“It seems that the task is greater than his capabilities,” he further said, referring to the Dutch general.

Cammaert is leading a UN joint committee tasked with overseeing a truce in the western city, a lifeline for the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid.

Top Intel Official Injured in Houthi Drone Attack Dies

In another development, A high-ranking intelligence official injured in a Houthi drone attack on Yemen’s largest air base held by Saudi mercenaries has died of his wounds, AFP news agency reported on Monday.

Brigadier General Saleh Tamah was wounded on Thursday in a strike on a military parade at al-Anad air base in southwestern Lahij province, some 60 kilometers north of Aden.

Medical sources told AFP that Tamah underwent several surgeries in a hospital in Aden but died Sunday morning.

So far, at least seven ranking officials have been killed in the attack which also left 11 other senior members of the Saudi-led operations center injured.  

The attack came in response to repeated Saudi airstrikes which have put a UN-brokered peace agreement in the strategic port city of Hudaydah in jeopardy.

Among those injured were deputy chief of staff Saleh al-Zandani, senior commander Fadel Hasan, and Lahij provincial governor Ahmad Abdullah al-Turki, with AFP saying the latter two had been transferred to Saudi Arabia for treatment.

Saudi Arabia invaded Yemen in 2015 with the aim of reinstating former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi who resigned amid a political deadlock in January 2015 and then fled to Riyadh.

The invasion has fallen short of its purpose, but has reportedly killed over 56,000 people and put the country in the throes of an acute famine.

With the war drawn into a deadlock, Saudi Arabia is virtually mired in a quagmire, having faced repeated military backlashes in Yemen and reprisal attacks inside its own territories.

On Saturday, the Yemeni army fired two ballistic missiles against military positions in Saudi Arabia’s Najran region, while artillery fire struck strongholds in the nearby Jizan, Yemen’s al-Masirah TV reported.

The strikes came after Saudi Arabia fired as many as 60 mortar rounds at various areas in Hudaydah despite the ceasefire which was hammered out in Sweden late last year.

Aden refinery fire spreads

Also a fire sparked by an explosion at an oil refinery in Aden on Friday spread to a second storage tank, injuring six people, Reuters news agency reported.

Sources close to Saudi Arabia have blamed Houthi fighters for the fire but Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, the head of the Supreme Revolutionary Committee of the Houthi movement, rejected the allegation on Twitter.

He said Yemen’s combined defense forces only seek to expel the invaders, adding they have always refrained from damaging the country’s vital infrastructure.

Aden has been the scene of intermittent clashes between UAE-backed militants and those supported by Saudi Arabia, raising speculation that the two invaders are competing for influence in Yemen.

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