A house destroyed by an air strike is seen in Sanaa on Sunday. Air raids, naval shelling and ground fighting shook Yemen on Sunday in some of the most widespread combat since a Saudi-led alliance intervened last month against Houthi militia.
Reuters/London
Yemeni Foreign Minister Riyadh Yaseen on Sunday rejected a call for peace talks issued by former president Ali Abdullah Saleh and said a Saudi-led military operation against Houthi militia had not ended.
"These calls are unacceptable after all of the destruction Ali Abdullah Saleh has caused. There can be no place for Saleh in any future political talks," Yaseen told a news conference in London.
Saleh, whose loyalists have been fighting alongside Iranian-allied Houthi rebels who toppled the central government, on Friday called on all Yemenis to return to political dialogue to find a way to end the country's spiralling conflict.
Yaseen was speaking after air raids, naval shelling and ground fighting shook Yemen on Sunday in some of the most widespread combat since the Saudi-led alliance intervened last month.
Air raids, naval shelling and ground fighting shook Yemen on Sunday in some of the most widespread combat since a Saudi-led alliance intervened last month against the Houthi militia who have seized wide areas of the country.
Air strikes
There were at least five air strikes on military positions and an area near the presidential palace compound in the Houthi-held capital Sanaa at dawn on Sunday, while warships pounded an area near the port of the southern city of Aden, residents said.
"The explosions were so big they shook the house, waking us and our kids up. Life has really become unbearable in this city," a Sanaa resident who gave his name as Jamal told Reuters.
The strikes on Sanaa were the first since the Saudi-led coalition said last week it was scaling back a campaign against the Houthis. But the air raids soon resumed as the Houthis' nationwide gains had not been notably rolled back, and there has been no visible progress toward peace talks.
Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter and arch regional adversary of Iran, feels menaced by the Houthi advance across Yemen since last September, when the rebels captured the capital.
The Houthis later forced President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi into exile. The Saudi-led intervention aims to restore Hadi and prevent Yemen disintegrating as a state, with al Qaeda militants thriving in the chaos and one of the world's busiest oil shipping lanes off the Yemeni coast at risk.
Eyewitnesses in Aden said foreign warships shelled Houthi emplacements around the city's main commercial port and dockyard, the first time they had been targeted.
Clashes near Aden airport
Aden residents reported heavy clashes between local armed militia from Yemen's Sunni south and Houthis backed up by army units loyal to Saleh.
Sources in the militia said they retaliated for the first time with tank and Katyusha rocket fire. Air strikes backed up local militia in clashes near Aden's international airport.
In the southern province of Dalea, militia said they had fought for hours to retake several rural districts from the Houthis with the help of air strikes. The fighting left around 25 Houthis and six local militiamen dead.
A grouping of armed tribesmen and Sunni Islamist fighters in the strategically important central Yemeni city of Taiz took back several districts from the Houthis in heavy fighting, according to residents there.
Medics reported that four civilians were killed when a rocket landed in a street and shelling damaged a main hospital.