Saeed Al-Batati

AL-MUKALLA: The Iran-backed Houthis have laid siege to a small village in the Yemeni central province of Al-Bayda and begun indiscriminately bombarding houses, Yemen’s government and rights activists said on Wednesday. 

Residents and local media reports said that the Houthis besieged Khubzah village in Al-Bayda’s Ghaifa after the Yemeni militia accused villagers of assassinating allied operatives. 

The villagers denied the Houthi accusations, and tribal mediations failed to convince the Houthis to stop their siege and shelling of the village. 

Yemen’s government said that the Houthis are besieging the village, preventing people — including the wounded or children and women — from leaving, warning of a humanitarian crisis in the village if the Houthis did not end the siege and the attacks.

“The Govt. condemns in the strongest terms the #Houthi militia’s attack on the Khubzah village in #AlBayda Governorate & imposing a siege on its residents, preventing the delivery of food & medical supplies,” the Yemeni government said on Twitter.

It slammed the Houthis for seeking to undermine the UN-brokered truce that has largely reduced violence across the country. “Such continuous attacks undermine the truce and efforts made to extend it.” 

Local activists circulated a letter from tribesmen pledging to hand over fellow men to the Houthis if they substantiated their allegations. 

The Houthis rejected the mediation and insisted that the tribes of Khubzah harbor armed men who killed people from the village at a nearby checkpoint last week. 

At the same time, the pro-government governor of Al-Bayda, based in neighboring Marib city, said that many civilians were killed or wounded in the Houthi attack and that the militia barred villagers from hospitalizing a wounded 13-year-old child named Zaid Saleh. 

The province’s governor asked the Houthis to stop their attack on the village, withdraw their forces and end the siege, urging international rights groups to pressure the Houthis to stop killing villagers in Al-Bayda. 

“Such crimes that target civilians constitute a real threat to peace in Yemen and the fragile UN-brokered truce,” Al-Bayda leadership said in a statement. 

Yemen’s Human Rights Ministry also accused the Houthis of using the killing of their soldiers as an excuse to storm the village, warning of “a humanitarian catastrophe and mass murder” if the Houthis continued. 

In October last year, the Houthis laid siege to the district of Abedia, in the central province of Marib, shortly after they made a rare incursion into the government-controlled areas south of Marib. 

Despite international calls and an intense diplomatic drive by the government, the Houthis refused to end the siege, and residents were eventually forced to lay down their arms or escape to other areas after coming under heavy artillery fire by the Houthis.