Heavy clashes erupted between Yemeni troops and Shiite rebels in the rugged mountainous north on Sunday, military officials and witnesses said, as humanitarian conditions worsened further in the impoverished country.
Army tanks fired salvos as armored cars blocked the entrances to the narrow allies of the old city in Saada, stronghold of the Zaidi rebels seeking to end the current form of government, the officials said.
The rebels returned fire on the army from a hideout in a fortress overlooking the old town. Shops were closed and residents stayed indoors.
"They (the army and the rebels) clashed and the police halted all traffic. I was not able to get to work," Abdel-Qader, a clerk, told AFP by telephone.
The fighting intensified on Saturday, leaving dozens of people dead or injured in the north of Yemen, according to military officials.
Scorched earth
After waging its "Scorched Earth" operation for three weeks, the government said on Friday it would observe a ceasefire if the rebels did in response to requests from aid agencies.
But fighting resumed only four hours after the truce was declared. Both sides have previously rejected ceasefire offers by the other party.
The Zaidi rebels, also known as Huthis, accused the government on Sunday of preventing civilians displaced by the fighting from returning to their homes and of using them in the battle.
"The government is not looking to apply a ceasefire but is trying to mislead and trick in order to use the issue of the displaced and those harmed (by the fighting) to get military assistance to the (army’s) besieged positions in Saada and Amran," the rebels said in a statement.
Casualties mount
They said the government had bombarded Amran province with rockets and fired artillery on areas there.
Four rebel leaders died in clashes that lasted for nine hours on in Saada on Saturday until the insurgents took flight from government forces, who destroyed rebel havens in the city, a military official was quoted by the official Saba news agency as saying.
A local official told Saba that rebels had murdered six women and ten children in a "horrendous manner."
"The rebel and terrorist elements attacked (a) village and killed women and children by shooting them in the head and neck, accusing them of cooperating with the government," the official said.
Also on Saturday, the army uncovered the bodies of 15 young men in Harf Sufyan in Amran province believed to have been killed by the rebels, a military official told AFP.
There is no official toll of casualties incurred since the government began its operation on August 11 against the rebels, who are loyal to leader Abdul-Malek al-Huthi and who the government alleges are supported by Iran.
Humanitarian crisis
UNHCR said in a briefing on Friday that civilians, including some 35,000 internally displaced people (IDPs), in and around Saada remain trapped by the fighting and are unable to reach safer parts of the country.
"The situation is most critical in the city of Saada which has been cut off from the rest of the world for more than two weeks," Andrej Mahecic, a spokesman for the UNHCR, which has evacuated its staff from Saada.
"There has been no water or electricity in Saada city since August 12. Food reserves are running low and the situation is becoming untenable for families, many of who are hosting friends, relatives or neighbors displaced by the street battles."
In August, a new wave of fighting erupted between rebel Shiite Muslims of the Zaydi sect and government forces trying to impose central authority.
An offshoot of Shiite Islam, the Zaidis are a minority in mainly Sunni Yemen but form the majority community in the north. President Ali Abdullah Saleh is himself a Zaidi.
Civilian suffering
Thousands have died and the United Nations estimates that around 150,000 have been displaced , many of them children, have fled their homes since intermittent fighting between the central government and rebels began in 2004.
U.N. aid agencies launched an appeal in Geneva this week for $23.5 million to help Yemen.
Thousands are thought to be staying in tented camps. Information about the conflict has been hard to verify because Northern provinces have been closed to media.
Yemen, the poorest Arab country, has been battling the rebellion in the north as well as a wave of al-Qaeda attacks and rising secessionist sentiment in the south.
The northern rebels have accused the government of using Saudi weaponry, issuing video footage of mortars bearing Saudi emblems.
Riyadh is worried instability in Yemen could allow militants to relaunch operations in Saudi Arabia.
The rebels published footage on Sunday that showed what they said were captured government buildings and burnt out tanks. The government also said on Sunday it had killed four rebels in separate attacks against authorities.