3 Killed by Landmine in Yemen

Date: 16 March 2020 - 22:12

News ID: ۷۷۱۵۵

SANAA (Dispatches) – A man and two children were killed when their motorcycle hit a landmine in Yemen’s northern province of Hajjah, residents said Monday.
They said the blast happened in a road near Bani Fayid village in Midi district on Sunday evening.
The area is near a battlefront between the former regime forces and Houthi fighters.
Nearly five years of the Saudi-led war have left Yemen strewn with landmines laid in farmlands, villages and roads.
Landmines and improvised explosives killed 498 civilians in Yemen in 2019, up some 23 percent from 405 in the year before, according to the Civilian Impact Monitoring Project, a humanitarian data source.
In another development, the former regime forces declared on Sunday that six Houthi fighters were killed in armed confrontations in the Red Sea port city of Hudadydah.
The former regime militants engaged in intense armed confrontations with the Houthi fighters, the statement said.
No information, however, was given about casualties among the former regime militants during the exchange of fire.
Elsewhere in Hudaydah, clashes erupted between the pro-regime forces and the Houthi fighters in the district of Hays in Hudaydah.
"An injured mid-level commander of the Houthi fighter was captured by the pro-government forces during the clashes in Hays,” said a military officer who asked to remain anonymous.
Last October, the United Nations started deploying cease-fire observers in Hudaydah, establishing five observation points near the military contact lines between the two warring parties.
Saudi Arabia and its allies launched a deadly military aggression against Yemen in an attempt to reinstall a Riyadh-backed former regime and eliminate the Houthi movement, which has been defending the country along with the armed forces.
The Western-backed offensive, coupled with a naval blockade, has destroyed the country’s infrastructure.
The Saudi aggression has displaced millions and left 24.1 million -- more than two-thirds of the Yemeni population -- in need of humanitarian assistance, including more than 12 million children.