DTN News: Yemen Rebuffs Shiite Zaidi Rebels' Claim Of Royal Saudi Air Force RSAF Air Raids

DTN News: Yemen Rebuffs Shiite Zaidi Rebels' Claim Of Royal Saudi Air Force RSAF Air Raids *Source: DTN News / Int'l Media (NSI News Source Info) SANAA, Yemen - August 29, 2009: Yemen rebuffed claims by Shiite rebels that the airforce from neighbouring Saudi Arabia has been aiding the army in its offensive against rebels in the north of the country. President Ali Abdullah Saleh recently said that the army will change its fighting tactics in Saada. A video grab from Yemen's state television shows army soldiers firing machine guns and rocket launchers on rebel targets in Saada province August 17, 2009. Yemen's latest assault on Shi'ite rebels in the north seems unlikely to end a conflict that has flickered for five years and inflicted thousands of casualties. It may only deepen instability in an impoverished country also struggling with southern separatists, al Qaeda militants and a disastrous mismatch between fast-depleting oil and water resources and explosive population growth, analysts say. "These fabricated claims are baseless. We have become familiar with such lies from those elements, as they overtly try to embroil our Saudi brothers in the confrontations," an unnamed official spokesman said in a statement carried by Saba state news agency early on Friday. The Shiite Zaidi rebels -- also known as Huthis -- had claimed that Saudi warplanes bombed districts in the rugged mountainous Saada province, near the Saudi border. "Saudi military aircraft executed several sorties on Thursday morning over the area of Malaheez and bombed the area before returning to Saudi Arabia," said a rebels' statement on Thursday. "We consider this action a flagrant intervention in Yemeni affairs... It is a continuation of the Saudi interference in the conflict, which has now got to the point of attacking Yemen (territory) directly," it added. Meanwhile, a military official told AFP that the army made major advances around Malaheez, aided by Yemeni warplanes which bombed rebel garrisons. "We are continuing the mopping-up operation in Malaheez and advancing toward the main stronghold of Marran Mountain," in the west of Saada, said the official who requested anonymity. President Ali Abdullah Saleh vowed on Thursday to crush the rebellion within weeks, saying that the army will change its fighting tactics. A video grab released by the Houthi rebel group August 28, 2009 shows members of the group standing on armoured personnel carriers seized from the army during the ongoing operation on their strongholds in northwestern Yemen. Banner on the vehicles reads "Death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews, victory to Islam." "I am sure that we will manage, in the weeks to come, to clean up these regions... I am sure we will bring an end to this sedition... We will change our tactics and our military strategies in order to root out the rebels and put a final end to their criminal acts," he said. There have been no reliable casualty figures since Yemen launched "Operation Scorched Earth" against the rebels more than two weeks ago, but the rebels say that dozens of civilians have been killed. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said last week that around 35,000 people have been displaced by the clashes. The government had offered a six-point plan to end the fighting, but the rebels dismissed the offer, recalling that a Qatari-brokered peace deal reached in June 2007 had never been implemented. An offshoot of Shiite Islam, the Zaidis are a minority in mainly Sunni Yemen but form the majority community in the north and want to establish anew the imamate overthrown in a 1962 coup. Thousands of people have been killed since the conflict first erupted in 2004.