YEMEN DENIES SAUDI AIR STRIKES AGAINST AL-HOUTHI REBELS

SANA'A, Aug. 28 (Saba) – Yemen's Defence Ministry vigorously denied on Friday the participation of Saudi Arabia in air strikes against the al-Houthi rebel group in the northern Yemeni province of Saada.

In a press release, the Ministry refuted the al-Houthi rebels' false allegations which had claimed that Saudi warplanes launched attacks on their hideouts at the Yemeni-Saudi border.

"These allegations are slanders and baseless", the Ministry said, "It becomes clear that those terrorist rebels and some of media trumpets abroad are attempting to plunge Saudi Arabia into the ongoing confrontations between the al-Houthi rebels and Yemen's armed forces supported by Yemeni people".

The Ministry affirmed that the terrorist elements of the al-Houthi group were facing a total collapse after painful air strikes of the Yemeni air forces on their hideouts.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi has said that evidences on foreign interference in the rebellion in Saada are being investigated by Yemen's concerned bodies.

Al-Qirbi made it clear the government would take requisite procedures against any foreign interference in the fighting of Yemeni troops against the al-Houthi rebels in Saada.

The Yemeni official affirmed that the military operations were imposed by the rebels, pinning his hopes to be ended quickly.

He accused the rebels of deterring the implementation of the Doha cease-fire agreement signed by the Yemeni government and the al-Houthi rebels in the Qatari capital, Doha, in June 2007.

Since the fighting erupted in 2004, thousands of people, soldiers and insurgents have been killed in Saada, which lies close to border with Saudi Arabia, after the rebel group was founded by Shiite rebel leader Hussein al-Houthi.

The Houthi rebels have been launching sporadic wars against the troops since then.

Hussein, the eldest brother of the current group leader Abdul-Malik, was killed by the army in September 2004.

The Yemeni government accuses the al-Houthi group of trying to reinstall the rule of imams, which was toppled by a republican revolution in northern Yemen in 1962.

NN/YA