Brigadier General Yahya Saree said on Saturday that the Saudi-led coalition and its mercenaries continue to flout the agreement and keep on implementing escalatory steps in the strategic Red Sea port city of Hudaydah, stressing that such actions will have dire repercussions.
“While our forces committed to implementing the Stockholm agreement and adopted unilateral measures such as redeployment (of forces) from Hudaydah ports, observation of the ceasefire and maintaining the flow of aid convoys among other steps, the coalition of aggression and its proxies are delaying the implementation of the accord,” Saree said, according to Press TV.
He noted that the al-Durayhimi district of Hudaydah province is still under siege by the Saudi-led alliance and its mercenaries, and the forces have been preventing the entry of food supplies and medicine destined for the besieged citizens for nearly a year.
Saree highlighted that the continued violation of Hudaydah truce has so far resulted in the deaths of 175 people, including 63 children, 27 women and 85 men. Another 481 civilians, including 169 children, 97 women and 215 men, have sustained injuries as well.
The senior Yemeni military official then held the United Nations and the Security Council responsible for the escalation of the situation in Hudayda.
“Our forces are ready to respond to any folly or escalatory step. The coalition aggression and its mercenaries will have to bear the brunt then,” Saree emphasized.
Ansarullah delegates and fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi loyalists held a round of peace negotiations in Rimbo, north of the Swedish capital city of Stockholm, last December. The talks resulted in the announcement of a break-through agreement.
The document includes 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’iz.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of Hadi back to power and crushing the Ansarullah movement.
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 four and a half years.
The war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The UN says over 24 million Yemenis are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger.