Saudi Warplanes Attack Yemen Despite Sweden Peace Talks

Saudi-led warplanes on Thursday launched airstrikes across Yemen despite earlier claims by Riyadh that it had ordered its forces to halt their attacks on Yemen with the beginning of peace talks in Sweden.

“The fact that the coalition forces and their mercenaries have continued their aggression against Yemen on the first day of peace talks in Sweden indicates that the aggressors have no interest in the establishment of peace and preparing the grounds for a second round of talks,” Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network quoted a Yemeni army general as saying.

Three women were killed, and many houses were destroyed in the Thursday Saudi attacks, General Yahya Saree, a spokesman of the Yemeni Armed Forces, said.

In retaliation to the violations, the Yemeni rocketry forces on Thursday fired six missiles known as ‘Zelzal’ as well as a number of artillery shells at the gatherings of the Saudi soldiers and mercenaries in Jizan and Asir, inflicting losses upon them.

The Yemeni air defense systems on the Western Coast downed a drone for the Saudi-led invaders.

Meanwhile, al-Masirah said in a separate report that the Yemeni army had managed to shoot down a spy drone belonging to Saudi-led forces in the coasts of Yemen’s western province of Hudaydah.

The renewed Saudi aggression comes as Martin Griffiths, the UN special envoy to Yemen, told reporters that the two sides were willing to work towards de-escalation.

Talks between the Ansarullah movement and the Saudi-led delegation opened on Thursday in Rimbo, Sweden, a rural area some 60 kilometers (37 miles) north of Stockholm.

They are expected to last a week, a UN official told reporters.