Saudi coalition violated truce over 5,000 times: Yemeni official
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According to a Yemeni official, the Saudi-led coalition has breached the UN-brokered truce on 5,000 occasions.
According to a Yemeni official, the Saudi-led coalition troops and its allied militant groups have violated the UN-brokered national truce more than 5,000 times.
At the time in April, the UN envoy to Yemen, Hans Grundberg, announced that "under this truce, all offensive military operations, by land, air, and sea, will cease."
Last month, the operations room monitoring the violations reported that the Saudi-led coalition forces committed 89 violations of the ceasefire in Al-Hudaydah.
On April 10, the Yemeni military media highlighted that the Saudi coalition committed 1,647 violations of the humanitarian and military armistice agreement within a week of its entry into force.
According to the source, who did not want to be identified, the 5,365 breaches included ground operations, infiltration attempts, airstrikes, overflights by Apache attack helicopters and spy drones, barrages of missiles, and artillery rounds, and shooting incidents.
He pointed out that the Riyadh-led military coalition either detains or delays the arrival of petroleum ships bound for Yemen, and does not allow commercial planes to land at or depart from Sanaa International Airport.
According to the official, the violations have resulted in the death and injury of several ordinary Yemenis, as well as damage to their property and farms.
He stated that the Saudi-led coalition's reconnaissance aircraft flew 1,748 sorties over the provinces of Hudaydah, Marib, Jawf, Taizz, Hajjah, Saada, 'Amran, Sana'a, Bayda, Dhale, and Lahij, as well as beyond the border.
He detailed more than 80 airstrikes targeting residential structures and positions of Yemeni military forces in the provinces of Hudaydah, Marib, Hajjah, Taizz, Bayda, Dhale, and Lahij.
He said that Saudi-led forces and their allies launched eight offensives against Yemeni army troops and fighters from Popular Committees in Yemen's central province of Marib's Raghwan, Al-Balaq, Al-Lajma, Al-Faliha, Mahzam Mas, and Harada districts.
According to the official, the forces of aggression also attempted seven infiltrations into the locations of Yemeni army troops and allied fighters from the Popular Committees in Taizz provinces As Silw and Maqbanah districts, Lahij province's Al-Had district, and Dhale province's Qa'atabah district.
Furthermore, Saudi-led forces and Takfiri terrorists launched a total of 1,163 Katyusha rockets, guided missiles, artillery rounds, and hundreds of shells, all of which were aimed at residential structures and Yemeni military sites.
In addition, the aggressor troops fired 2,742 shots into regular people's houses and military facilities across a variety of fronts.
Read more: UN warns of worsening humanitarian situation in Yemen
Meanwhile, Abdul Qader Al-Murtada, head of the prisoner affairs committee in the Sanaa-based National Salvation Government, slammed the Saudi mercenaries' delay in exchanging captives, claiming that discussions with the UN on the issue are moving too slowly.
Murtada told Yemen’s Al-Masirah TV, “Following Saudi Arabia’s purported initiative regarding the release of some Yemeni prisoners, officials with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) informed us that they had visited the detainees and found out they were of different nationalities.”
He stressed that “Progress in negotiations with the United Nations regarding prisoner exchange is very slow, despite the fact that we have presented many initiatives aimed at resolution of the humanitarian issue."
More than half of Yemen’s people face acute hunger, with half of the children under five being at risk of malnutrition.
Murtada noted that the blame for the implementation of prisoner exchanges supervised by the UN is on the Saudi-paid Takfiri militants who have yet to compile their lists.
Saudi Arabia has brutally waged a war against the Yemeni people for over 7 years.
