Sanaa, February 12: The Yemeni army said Shiite rebels broke a ceasefire on Friday, just hours after it came into force, killing several soldiers in a string of attacks in the far north of the country.
The head of military operations in Saada province, General Mohammed Abdullah al-Qussi, said he himself came under rebel attack.
“I escaped an assassination attempt by the rebels who opened fire on my car,” Qussi said.
“The rebels broke the ceasefire and carried out a series of attacks in Iqab district which resulted in dead and wounded among our troops,” Qussi added.
It was the first report of violations of the ceasefire between the government and the rebels that came into force at midnight (2100 GMT Thursday) in a bid to end six years of on-off fighting.
Earlier, army commanders had reported a halt to clashes across the northern mountains after rebel leader Abdul Malak al-Huthi ordered his fighters to respect the truce announced by President Ali Abdullah Saleh late on Thursday.
“Calm reigns on all fronts from Saada and Malahidh (in the far north near the Saudi border) to Harf Sufian,” further south, one field commander said.
Commanders had said they had seen rebel fighters start work on removing the roadblocks they have maintained on some of the trunk routes through the northern mountains blocking government traffic.
But in a sign of the distrust still felt by some within the army after six years of conflict, one officer said he was waiting to see whether the rebels really respected the truce.
“We are holding our positions and keeping our fingers on the trigger,” the officer said, asking not to be named.
The six-point truce requires the rebels to reopen three major routes in the first stage of implementation: the road between Saada, Harf Sufian and the capital Sanaa; the road from Saada west to Malahidh, and the road from Saada east to Al-Jawf.
It also calls for a rebel withdrawal from government buildings, the return of weapons seized from the security forces, the freeing of all prisoners including Saudis, the abandonment of captured army posts, and a rebel pledge not to attack Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis joined the fighting in November.
Saudi ground troops as well as aircraft repeatedly engaged the rebels in operations that the rebels complained continued even after their fighters had withdrawn from all Saudi territory they occupied during the fighting.
There has been no reliable death toll from the fighting as reporters have been barred from the war zone but aid agencies say as many as 150,000 people have fled their homes.
The rebels since 2004 have protested of economic and political discrimination against the north’s Zaidis.
An offshoot of Shiite Islam, the Zaidis form the majority community in the north of the country but are a minority in mainly Sunni Yemen.
—Agencies