(MENAFN- Arab Times) Warplanes from the Saudi-led coalition pounded Shiite rebels across three Yemeni cities on Friday, as Riyadh reported the death of a Saudi child from cross-border fire. The coalition has stepped up its raids on positions held by the Houthi Shiite rebels and their allies since a humanitarian ceasefire ended late Tuesday.
The latest violence came as the UN's human rights agency said that at least 1,037 civilians have been killed in Yemen since the start of the air campaign on March 26. Spokeswoman Cecile Pouilly said 234 children and 134 women were among the dead and that 2,453 others were wounded over the past eight weeks in a war that has heavily damaged infrastructure. Huge explosions rocked the outskirts of the capital Sanaa after Friday's air strikes.
There were also raids on second city Aden in the south and Marib province east of the capital, residents said. "It was a morning of terror," one resident of a southern suburb of Sanaa told AFP after a wave of attacks on military bases in the Dhabwa and Rimat Hamid areas. In north Sanaa, coalition warplanes targeted a stadium and a camp of the Republican Guards loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has sided with the Houthis.
In all, eight rebel and allied targets were hit in and around Sanaa, including Dalaimi air base near the international airport, witnesses said. Residents said coalition raids also struck Houthi positions in Marib. There were no immediate tolls available for Sanaa and Marib. But in Aden, at least 16 Houthis and allied fighters were killed in raids and fighting on Friday, sources said, adding that three militiamen who back President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi also died in clashes.
Hayef al-Bakri, a local militia official in the port city, urged the Saudi-led coalition to intervene on the ground in Aden "to save residents". He told AFP that civilians in Aden were facing "abuses" at the hands of the rebels. Across the border in Saudi Arabia, a mortar round fired from Yemen killed a Saudi child, a civil defence official in the Jazran region said.
Another three civilians were wounded, he added. On Thursday, one civilian was killed and three wounded in cross-border shelling into Najran province, Saudi state television reported. The coalition has said it was determined to pursue its air campaign against the Houthis in order to restore the authority of Hadi, who has fled to Riyadh with members of his government.
The United Nations, which has warned that Yemen is on the verge of total collapse, will host a conference next week in Geneva hoping to relaunch political talks on Yemen, despite uncertainty over who will attend. A cross border rocket attack launched from inside Yemen killed one Saudi citizen and wounded two others on Thursday in the southern province of Dhahran, Saudi Arabia's state news agency (SPA) reported. "At 18:30 on Thursday the civil defense sent a communiquÈ stating that the village of al-Hosn in Dhahran faced by military rockets from inside Yemeni territory, which resulted in the death of a citizen and injury of two others," SPA said late on Thursday.
The Saudi-Yemen border has in some places become a front line between the kingdom and Iran-allied Houthi rebel group that a Saudi-led Arab alliance has been bombing for eight weeks. Earlier this week, the Houthis' Al Masira TV channel broadcast footage it said showed its fighters entering a Saudi border post after being fired on by Saudi tanks and helicopters. A bomb exploded at a Shi'ite Houthi mosque in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Friday, wounding 13 people, a security source said, and the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on Twitter. The bombing came against a backdrop of civil war in the country.
Iranianbacked Houthi rebels have seized large swathes of territory, including Sanaa, prompting formation of a Saudi-backed Arab coalition that is using air power to try to halt their advances. Sunni Islamist militants have been seeking to extend their influence amid the chaos. "Members of the caliphate in Sanaa have detonated an explosive device in a Houthi mosque in the people's district " which lead to the death and injury of many of them " said the Islamic State. According to a security source in Sanaa two out of the 13 wounded were in critical condition.
The source added that the bomb was planted inside the mosque before Friday prayers. Fleeing the war at home, thousands of Yemenis have made it across the Gulf of Aden to find refuge in Djibouti, a sleepy Horn of Africa nation where the United Nations has set up a staging hub for aid for the conflict-torn Arab country.
Many of the refugees are relieved to have escaped after two months of Saudiled airstrikes targeting Yemen's Shiite rebels and fighting on the ground between rival factions that have pushed their country to the brink of collapse. They arrived with just the few belongings they could carry, mostly on small, rickety fishing boats. Others came on bigger vessels crammed with people, reversing a perilous, centuries-old route which countless African migrants have taken in the other direction.
The UNHCR says a total of 5,000 Yemeni refugees have made it to Djibouti, including 3,000 in the capital, Djibouti city, and 1,000 in Obock, 300 kms (187 miles) to the north - making it currently the biggest Yemeni refugee population. The influx has hiked up local prices, with markets, hotels, and drivers trying to make the most of the situation in an already struggling economy. "We are overwhelming this country, but we have nowhere else to go," said Amin Nasser, a 45-year-old teacher from the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. Said Abu-Saleh, a 28-year-old from the Yemeni city of Taiz, had just arrived with 150 other people by boat.
In the stifling heat, he was waiting to be processed by immigration police in the port of Djibouti. "We came on a cattle boat, sitting next to the animals for 19 hours straight," he said. In Obock, the Al-Rahma orphanage has become home to about 100 families, mostly from the Yemeni town of Bab Al- Mandab - just a 30-minute boat trip from Obock. Hamda, 55, takes care of her father, Ibrahim Mohamed, who, at 80, is the oldest refugee at the orphanage and who is both blind and deaf. The two share their room with three other families.
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