SANAA (Dispatches) —
Infighting among Saudi- and UAE-backed forces and mercenaries in Yemen has left at least 35 dead in a southern province in the past 24 hours, officials said on Wednesday, a development that threatens a ceasefire in the country’s wider Saudi-led conflict.
They say that an artillery duel that started in the late hours of Tuesday hit areas around a local airport in the city of Ataq, the capital of the southern Shabwa province.
Five civilians were among the dead, they added, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
The fighting comes after months of tensions within the Saudi-led coalition that has been wreaking havoc in the country since 2015.
Earlier violence late Sunday erupted in the area after the province’s governor, backed by the United Arab Emirates, decided to sack a police commander known to have an anti-UAE stance, the officials said.
Saudi Arabia launched a devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with its Arab allies and with arms, logistical, and political support from the United States and other Western states. Simultaneously with the invasion, the aggressors and their supporters also put the entire impoverished country under an all-out land, aerial, and naval blockade.
The objective was to reinstall the Riyadh-friendly regime of former Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, and crush Ansarullah, which has been running state affairs in the absence of a functional government in Yemen.
While the Saudi-led coalition has failed to achieve any of its objectives, the war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The developments come days after a truce between Yemen’s aggressors and the impoverished country’s popular resistance Houthi Ansarullah movement was renewed for another two-month-long period.
The extension, running from August 2 to October 2, “includes a commitment from the parties to intensify negotiations to reach an expanded truce agreement as soon as possible,” the United Nations’ special envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, said last Tuesday.