Saudi Arabia’s state-run news agency has said the international coalition it leads against Shia rebels in Yemen has officially ended a truce.
The “coalition leadership announces the end of the truce in Yemen starting from 14:00 [11:00 GMT], the alliance said in a statement on Saturday carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.
The ceasefire had been ended due to continuous rebel “attacks on the kingdom’s territories by firing ballistic missiles towards Saudi cities, targeting Saudi border posts, and hampering aid operations”, it said.
The rebels have also “continued to shell residents and kill and detain Yemeni civilians in cities under their control”, said the coalition.
The truce technically came into effect on 15 December 2015 as a mutual show of good faith while peace negotiations were taking place in Switzerland. But the truce never truly took hold on the ground in Yemen, with both sides ignoring it. The UN said on 20 December that there had been “numerous violations” of the ceasefire agreement from the very start.
Yemen’s conflict pits the internationally recognised government backed by a Saudi-led, US-supported coalition against the rebels, known as Houthis, who are allied with a former president. The rebels have intensified their rocket attacks across the Saudi border in recent days, prompting the coalition to threaten severe reprisals.
The statement comes after the coalition announced that Saudi air defence forces had intercepted a ballistic missile fired from Yemen towards the kingdom’s city of Abha late on 1 January.
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