Little left to saveAS IS the way of the Middle East, when a ceasefire beckons the fighting intensifies, as the fighters try to press their advantage before the jaw-jaw begins. No sooner had Saudi Arabia talked last week of halting the year-long bombardment of its much poorer neighbour than its air strikes on Yemen resumed. The UN mediator, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, could barely scramble from Sana’a before the capital was struck. Another hundred Yemenis were killed when bombs struck a market in Hajja, a town near the Saudi border. Further south, the armed Shia group known as the Houthis, which seized the capital along with much of the country in 2014, continued shelling Taiz, a predominantly Sunni city.
The deaths will probably change little. The battle lines have stayed stubbornly fixed for months. Both sides seem aware that a military victory is out of reach. After a year of bombings, bombs lose their impact. “We forget them in minutes,” says a nonchalant Yemeni. In Sana’a the old city’s once-empty alleyways are crowded again. Somehow markets are full. The electricity grid is entirely down, but a surfeit of solar...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/22w3Bsp
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