Saudi-led coalition launches air raids in Yemen's Hudaydah

The Saudi-led coalition has carried out fresh airstrikes in Yemen’s western province of Hudaydah in violation of the 2018 Stockholm Agreement.

News ID: 449492

Date: 09 March 2020 - 09:26

RNA - Yemeni media say the coalition warplanes raided the Salif area. The coalition also said it has destroyed targets in Red Sea’s Bab al-Mandeb strait.

There have been no reports of casualties as of yet.

Yemeni forces have repeatedly accused Saudi Arabia of violating the UN-backed agreement. They say such infringements have led to the death and injury of hundreds of civilians.

The airstrikes are in breach of an agreement reached between the warring sides during a round of UN-sponsored peace negotiations in Sweden in December 2018.

The deal between Yemen's Ansarullah movement and representatives loyal to former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi included three provisions: a ceasefire along the Hudaydah front and the redeployment of armed forces out of the city and its port; an agreement on prisoner exchange; and a statement of understanding on the southern Yemeni city of Ta’izz.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its allies launched the devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing back to power the government of Hadi and crushing Ansarullah.

The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives over the past nearly five years.

The Saudi-led coalition has been widely criticized for the high civilian death toll from its bombing campaign. The alliance has carried out nearly 20,500 air raids in Yemen, according to the data collected by the Yemen Data Project.

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