Report: Yemen Accuses Houthis of Violating Ceasefire 80 Times in April

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi terrorists have committed at least 80 violations of an ongoing ceasefire since it went into effect in early April, the official army of the country alleged on Thursday.

“Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis have reportedly launched attacks on the southern front of Marib [in western Yemen], a Twitter account associated with the Yemeni Army media center reported on Thursday [April 21],” the Saudi outlet Al Arabiya relayed. Saudi Arabia is deeply involved in the war, supporting the legitimate government of Yemen against the Houthis.

“At least 80 violations were reported on April 19 despite a UN [United Nations]-brokered truce that went into effect early April,” the news outlet observed.

Al Arabiya referred to a U.N.-brokered ceasefire in Yemen’s nearly eight-year-long civil war. The truce began on April 2 and was designed to last two months. As part of the temporary peace agreement, all parties involved in Yemen’s civil war (i.e. Houthi jihadists and Yemen’s Saudi-led coalition government) agreed to several terms. U.N. Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg detailed the ceasefire’s guidelines in a press release issued on April 1.

The statement read, in part:

The parties accepted to halt all offensive military air, ground and maritime operations inside Yemen and across its borders; they also agreed for fuel ships to enter into Hudaydah ports and commercial flights to operate in and out of Sana’a airport to predetermined destinations in the region; they further agreed to meet under my auspices to open roads in Taiz and other governorates in Yemen. The Truce can be renewed beyond the two-month period with the consent of the parties.

Houthi leaders also allegedly agreed to “ridding the Houthi ranks of children soldiers” as part of further developments that sprouted in the wake of the ceasefire deal, the U.N. claimed claim on April 18.

“UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the Houthis committed to identifying children in their ranks and releasing them within six months,” Al Arabiya relayed on April 21.

The Houthi terrorist organization overthrew Yemen’s government in March 2015, escalating a conflict that began in late 2014 into the currently ongoing civil war. Saudi Arabia’s government led a U.S.-backed military coalition that intervened in Yemen’s civil war against the Houthis in late March 2015. The Houthis enjoy close cooperation and support from fellow Shiite leaders in Iran.

Yemen’s civil war killed an estimated 377,000 Yemenis by the end of 2021, according to the U.N. The organization said in November 2021 that most of these deaths were caused not by combat but indirectly, with 70 percent of the deaths attributed to children under the age of five. Many of these deaths were likely caused by starvation.

“Today, more than 17.4 million Yemenis are food insecure; an additional 1.6 million ‘are expected to fall into emergency levels of hunger in coming months, taking the total of those with emergency needs, to 7.3 million by the end of the year,” the U.N.’s food assistance arm, the World Food Program (WFP), reported on March 14.

The number of people facing “catastrophic” levels of hunger in Yemen is projected to increase fivefold from 31,000 currently to 161,000 by June 2022, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported. https://t.co/0XzZGaN03I

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The U.N. has said the Houthis contribute to Yemen’s humanitarian crisis by preventing food aid shipments from either arriving in the nation’s ports or by sabotaging the aid’s distribution. The WFP accused the Houthis of these actions in June 2019. The Associated Press relayed the incident at the time, writing:

Yemen’s rebels last month turned back a World Food Program shipment meant to feed some 100,000 families in the war-torn nation that’s been pushed to the brink of starvation, a spokesperson for the aid agency said Tuesday.

The rejection of the shipment came as the WFP was in tense talks with the rebels, known as Houthis, who had blocked the agency’s attempt to register millions of Yemenis in need of aid by using biometrics as a means of preventing food aid theft. The WFP has mainly blamed the rebels for stealing the food aid. The rejected shipment will also deprive thousands of families of badly needed aid.

Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman revealed on March 25 that Yemen’s Houthis perpetrated drone and missile strikes on Saudi oil facilities sometime earlier that same month. Saudi Arabia’s energy minister said the damaging strikes had “put into question our ability to supply the world with the necessary energy requirements.”

The Houthis fight for imposing a radical Shiite Islamist regime onto Yemen under the slogan “Allahu akbar, Death to America, Death to Israel, a Curse Upon the Jews. Victory to Islam.”

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden removed the Houthi group from the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization and Specially Designated Global Terrorist lists in February 2021.