Asiri said that more air strikes targeted Houthi rebels on Wednesday and the alliance said in a statement it had intercepted two missiles fired from rebel-held territory aimed at two southern Saudi towns, Abha and Khamis Mushait.
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A man looks for survivors under the rubble of a food factory hit by Saudi-led air strikes in Sanaa, Yemen.
Another pro-government source, who spoke anonymously due to restrictions on talking to media, said eight Houthi fighters had been killed late Wednesday in fierce clashes with pro-Hadi forces in Yemen’s southwestern Taiz province.
On Tuesday, the Saudi-led military coalition conducted air strikes on Sanaa for the first time in five months, residents said, after United Nations -backed peace talks to end the conflict broke down at the weekend.
In a separate development, residents in Azzan in the province of Shabwa in southern Yemen said Al Qaeda militants had dismantled their checkpoints and had withdrawn from the city on Tuesday following air strikes – apparently by the Saudi-led coalition – targeting their positions there.
The conflict in Yemen pits the internationally recognized government of Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and his allies, backed by the Saudi-led coalition of Arab states, against Shiite rebels known as Houthis who overran and captured Sanaa in September 2014.
According to UN Special Envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the parties are expected to return to the negotiating table no sooner than in a month.
Assiri said the coalition had respected the truce for three months but had resumed operations because of increased violations by the rebels and the failure of peace talks in Kuwait.
Yemen’s defenseless people have been under massive attacks by the coalition led by the Saudi regime for almost 17 months but Riyadh has reached none of its objectives in Yemen so far.
Children’s agency UNICEF said Tuesday that “four children were reportedly killed and three were injured” on Sunday in Nihm, northeast of Sanaa.
Initial reports said that at least 21 people, the majority of them civilians, had been killed, including a number of workers in a potato chip factory in Sana’a. The UN child protection agency Unicef has said more than 1,100 children were confirmed to have died since the conflict began previous year.
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Twenty one million people – about 80 percent of the Yemeni population – are in dire need of some manner of aid, said the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in a Monday report.
