On Monday, the leader of the Houthis in Yemen warned the Saudi-led coalition not to “miss” the opportunity for the truce put forward by the rebels on Saturday to stop strikes on Saudi Arabia.
“We will spare no effort in confronting the aggression and siege with everything we can, and we will never accept the continuation of the siege,” Abdul-Malik al-Houthi said in a speech on the occasion of Ramadan, broadcast by the rebels’ Al-Masira channel.
He added, “There is no room for them to escape from the blows and get out of the predicament except by stopping the aggression, lifting the siege and ending the occupation,” warning “you will regret it if you miss it” (the truce opportunity).
On Saturday, the Houthis announced a three-day truce and offered peace talks on the condition that the Saudis halt air strikes and the blockade of Yemen and withdraw “foreign forces”.
Hours after the truce was announced, the Saudi-led coalition launched air strikes on Yemen.
The initiative of the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels came the day after they launched 16 attacks throughout Saudi Arabia, including an attack on Aramco’s oil facilities in Jeddah, on the eve of the seventh anniversary of the start of the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen to confront the Houthis.
The coalition has not yet commented on the Houthi announcement of the truce.
The Saudi-led coalition intervened to support the Yemeni government in 2015, after rebels seized the capital, Sanaa, the previous year.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people directly or indirectly and left millions on the brink of starvation in what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe.
In mid-March, the Houthis rejected an initiative put forward by the Gulf Cooperation Council to organize a dialogue for the warring forces in Yemen to be held between March 29 and April 7 in Riyadh because it was being conducted “in countries of aggression”, in reference to Saudi Arabia.
They also previously rejected a ceasefire initiative proposed by Saudi Arabia last year.