...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of...
i soldiers were killed in an overnight rebel attack near the blockaded city of Taez, Yemen's government said on Monday, calling it a "dangerous escalation" after a months-long ceasefire.
The assault, which also left several soldiers maimed, was aimed at cutting off a key route to the southwestern city of about two million, the government said.
The Iran-backed Iran's Houthi sock puppets
...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The legitimate Yemeni government has accused the them of having ties to the Iranian government. Honest they did. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is
God is Great, Death to Americaâ„¢, Death to Israel, a curse on the JewsThey like shooting off... ummm... missiles that they would have us believe they make at home in their basements. On the plus side, they did murder Ali Abdullah Saleh, which was the only way the country was ever going to be rid of him...
s have blocked main roads into Taez since 2015, the same year that a Saudi-led coalition intervened in the conflict.
Yemen's warring parties have been observing a ceasefire since April, bringing a drastic reduction in hostilities although small-scale fighting has continued.
The Taez attack was a "blatant challenge to all initiatives and efforts seeking to end the war and achieve peace", Yemen's internationally recognized government said in a statement.
It was "an attempt to undermine efforts to expand and extend the humanitarian truce
..The purposes of a truce are twofold: 1.) bring up more arms, ammunition, and reinforcements; and 2.) get the enemy to relax his vigilance. A
truceis not the same thing as a
ceasefire, and a
ceasefiredoesn't mean you have to stop shooting...
", it added.
Military sources said the rebels, who hold much of Yemen including the capital Sanaa, were trying to cut off the road linking Taez with government-controlled restive Lahj
... a Yemeni governate located in the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula. It is the stomping grounds on the southern secessionist al-Harak movement
The rebels infiltrated army sites and clashed with government soldiers in a battle fought on multiple fronts, they said. No detail was available on rebel casualties.
Also on Monday, 16 human rights
...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless...
groups made a joint appeal for the Huthis to open roads into Taez to ease growing humanitarian problems in Yemen's third-biggest city.
"Dangerous and poorly maintained mountain roads... are the only connection between Taez city's besieged population and the rest of the world," said Michael Page, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.
"Opening the main roads would help immensely to alleviate the suffering of a population that has been in near-total isolation for seven years."
Holding talks about opening the roads was one of the conditions of the UN-brokered truce. But despite meetings in Jordan, no breakthrough has been reached.