Saudi-led airstrikes kill 15 in Yemen despite truce

The Saudi-led coalition forces bombed Houthi targets in several provinces in Yemen on Sunday, killing at least 15 people, despite a U.N.-brokered truce, sources said.

The fresh airstrikes against Houthi fighters in the capital Sanaa killed at least 12 people Sunday dawn, medics told Xinhua, as several others were receiving treatment in hospital.

The airstrikes also destroyed a conference hall used by the Shiite Houthi group and damaged several civilian houses.

In neighbouring Amran province, the warplanes hit a cement factory on Sunday, killing three people and wounding 10 others, the state-run Saba news agency reported.

Meanwhile, the coalition also carried out air raids in the northern Saada province that is the Houthi stronghold and the southern province of Lahj, security sources said. The is no immediate report of casualties.

The U.N.-brokered truce took into effect on 23:59 (2059 GMT) on Friday and will last through the end of Muslim holy month of Ramadan on July 17. However, the warring parties did not abide by the ceasefire deal.

The Saudi-led coalition forces and Houthi group continued their military operations Friday midnight, hours after the truce technically went into effect.

The temporary truce aimed at facilitating aid deliveries to more than 21 million people in Yemen who have been suffered severe shortage in food, water and medicine supplies after more than three months of airstrikes and civil war.

A U.N. statement said Thursday that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had received assurances from Houthis, the General People's Congress, the former ruling party led by ex-President Ali Abdullash Saleh who supported the Houthis, and other parties that "the pause will be fully respected and that there will be no violations from any combatants under their control."

"It is imperative and urgent that humanitarian aid can reach all vulnerable people of Yemen unimpeded and through an unconditional humanitarian pause," said the statement.

The U.N. envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed has warned that the conflict-torn country is just "one step from famine."

The warring parties accused the others of violating the truce.

Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi delivered a speech aired by his group's Almasirah television on Friday night, in which he said "there is no hope for the declared truce to be successful as our experience of the previous one was bitter."

On May 12, the Saudi-led Arab coalition unilaterally declared a five-day ceasefire in Yemen to allow deliveries of humanitarian aids. But it was broken by all sides.

The Saudi-led coalition has been striking the Houthis and their allied forces since March 26 when Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was ousted by the Houthi militia which seized the capital Sanaa by force in September.

U.N. human rights agencies reported that more than 3,000 Yemenis have been killed, mostly civilians, and over 13,000 others wounded, while more than a million have fled their homes since late March.

According to U.N. statistics, the coalition-imposed blockade has also contributed in starving millions in Yemen where nearly 13 million people face a food security crisis and 9.4 million people have their access to water cut or severely disrupted, raising the risk of outbreaks of water-borne diseases, including cholera. Endit