Yemeni
government says fighting between Salafi militants and Houthi fighters
has stopped in the country’s north, as a ceasefire deal came into
effect.
Yehia Abuesbaa, head of a presidential committee that mediated the
truce, said on Saturday that the ceasefire had a better chance of
holding as it included all factions implicated in the fighting in Sa’ada
and adjacent provinces.On Friday, the government began sending troops to the area to oversee the ceasefire. The forces entered the town of Dammaj in Sa’ada on Saturday.
Dammaj has been the scene of bloody clashes between Houthis and Salafi groups since late October.
The clashes erupted after Houthis accused extremist Salafist groups of recruiting thousands of foreign militants to attack them.
Houthis, a Shia group led by Sheikh Abdel-Malek al-Houthi, control parts of the north of Yemen and are engaged in reconciliation talks with the government in Sana’a.
They accuse the government of violating their civil rights and marginalizing them politically, economically, and religiously.
On November 22, Houthi lawmaker Abdul Karim Jadban was gunned down by armed men on a motorbike as he was coming out of a mosque in Sana’a.
Jadban was a prominent Houthi lawmaker and the leading politician representing the Shia Houthi community in the national dialog currently underway in the Arab country.
