Fighting rages as Yemen ceasefire nearing end

CAIRO/SANAA: A senior official in Yemen’s Houthi movement has been killed, Saudi-owned television station Al Arabiya reported on Saturday, hours before the end of a fragile UN-brokered truce.

A Houthi official, however, denied the report that Hassan Yahya had been killed along with 23 others during an attack in the area of Khubah on the Yemeni-Saudi border.

The attack was launched by Saudi forces in response to rebel assaults against Saudi territory, Al Arabiya said, without specifying exactly when the incident took place.

Yahya was a member of the rebel delegation to peace talks with the government in Kuwait that ended in August without Arabiya said.

Speaking anonymously, a Houthi official denied the report. “Neither Yahya nor any other representative in the Kuwait negotiations was killed,” the official said.

Yemen’s 72-hour truce is due to end at 11:59 pm (2059 GMT) on Saturday.

Yemen’s warring sides have accused each other of violating the ceasefire since it went into effect at midnight on Wednesday. The truce is the latest in a series of ceasefires that failed to hold in the impoverished country.

Yemen has been locked in a power struggle between the Saudi-backed government and Iran-allied rebels for more than two years. a breakthrough, Al