SANA’A (Dispatches) – Despite an ongoing two-month UN-brokered nationwide truce, Saudi border soldiers fired a barrage of artillery rounds at a residential area in Yemen’s northwestern province of Sa’ada and killed at least two people.
The victims died on Saturday night as Saudi military struck the Razih district, the Arabic-language al-Mayadeen television news network, citing a Yemeni military source speaking on condition of anonymity, reported. Three other people sustained injuries in the attack.
There were no immediate reports about the extent of damage caused as a result of the strike.
Saudi-led military coalition’s troops and their allied mercenaries have violated the truce hundreds of times.
According to Yemen’s official Saba news agency, the violations included 76 spying flights over several localities in the northern Yemeni provinces of al-Jawf, Hajjah and Sa’ada as well as the strategic central province of al-Bayda.
Earlier this month, UN special envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg announced a two-month ceasefire.
The deal stipulates halting offensive military operations, including cross-border attacks, and allowing fuel-laden ships to enter Yemen’s lifeline al-Hudaydah port and commercial flights in and out of the airport in the capital Sana’a “to predetermined destinations in the region.”
The violations of the UN-brokered ceasefire come as Saudi-backed exiled Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who is based in Riyadh, ceded power to a new “presidential council” as Saudi Arabia struggles to exit Yemen quagmire.
The head of the council asserted on Friday he would end the seven-year-long war via a peace process.
“The leadership council promises the people to end the war and achieve peace through a comprehensive peace process that guarantees the Yemeni people all its aspirations,” Rashad al-Alimi said in the televised speech.
Early on Thursday, Hadi delegated power to a presidential council and dismissed his deputy.
The presidential council is chaired by Rashad al-Alimi, an adviser to Hadi and a former interior minister in the former government of Ali Abdullah Saleh. Alimi enjoys close ties with Saudi Arabia as well as the Al-Qaeda-linked Islah party inside Yemen.
Saudi Arabia launched the devastating war against Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with a number of its allies and with arms and logistics support from the U.S. and several Western states.
The objective was to bring back to power the Hadi regime and crush the 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.