Saudi-led coalition warplanes hit bases in Yemeni capital Sanaa

Arab war planes bomb Yemen; exiles report U.S.-Houthi talks Sun, May 31 18:17 PM EDT image By Sami Aboudi and Noah Browning DUBAI (Reuters) - Aircraft from a Saudi-led coalition bombed Yemen's Houthi outposts throughout the country on Sunday, residents said, while Yemen's government in exile said the militia was in talks with the United States in Oman. The raids hit an air base near Sanaa airport and a military installation aligned with the Houthis overlooking the presidential palace compound in the capital Sanaa. The Saudi-led coalition began air strikes in Yemen in March in a campaign to restore Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power. He fled in March, after Iranian-backed Houthis seized Sanaa in September and then thrust into central and south Yemen. Nearly 2,000 people have been killed and over 8,000 wounded in the conflict since March 19, according to the United Nations. The Houthis' TV channel al-Masira said the coalition had launched 25 air strikes on the main Houthi provinces of Saada and Hajja along the kingdom's border, without giving details, and said Saudi ground forces were also shelling the areas. Residents in Saada confirmed to Reuters by telephone that Houthi positions were heavily bombed by war planes, but there was no immediate confirmation by Saudi authorities. In the central city of Taiz, also a main battleground between armed Hadi loyalists and Houthi militiamen, residents reported Arab air strikes on Houthi forces gathered in a historic mountaintop fortress and a nearby special forces base. OMAN TALKS Yemen's exiled government in Saudi Arabia told Reuters on Sunday that senior Houthi officials are holding talks with the United States in neighboring Oman to help end the nine-week conflict, in a sign that diplomacy may be advancing. "We have been informed that there are meetings, at American request, and that a private American plane carried the Houthis to Muscat," Rajeh Badi, a spokesman for the Hadi government told Reuters by telephone from the Saudi capital Riyadh. The Yemeni government was not party to the talks, Badi said. There was no immediate comment from Houthi or U.S. officials. If confirmed, the Oman meeting would be the first between the Houthis and the United States, Saudi Arabia's main foreign ally, since the start of the war. The United States has said it was providing arms and intelligence to Saudi Arabia during its campaign in Yemen and has historically been its most powerful ally. "We hope that these talks are being held in the context of international efforts to implement U.N. Security Council resolution 2216," Badi said. The resolution, adopted in April, recognized Hadi as Yemen's legitimate authority and called on the Houthis to quit the main cities. U.N. Special envoy to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, has renewed efforts to set another date for Yemeni political factions to meet in Geneva for peace talks, which were postponed indefinitely after Hadi demanded delays. Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdul-Salam announced on May 23 that he had departed with an official delegation from the group to neighboring Oman to discuss the conflict with the Omani government, a frequent peacebroker in the region. Yemeni politicians who met Ould Cheikh Ahmed in Sanaa on Saturday said he had informed them that "indirect talks" were underway in Muscat between the Houthi delegation and U.S. officials through Omani mediation. Officials from the U.N. envoy's team were not immediately available to comment. CLUSTER BOMBS Heavy artillery clashes along Yemen's border with the kingdom have increased as the war enters its ninth week. Houthi TV reported that the rebels fired 20 rockets at Saudi Arabia's southwestern border city of Najran on Saturday, and broadcast a video it said showed Houthi forces shelling a Saudi border post. A Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman said a border guard was killed and seven others were wounded on Saturday in the Najran region by rocket attacks from inside Yemen. The coalition's campaign aimed to neutralize "the threats posed by heavy weapons in the hands of elements not backing the legitimate authority in Yemen," Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri of Egypt, a member of the Saudi-led coalition, told reporters alongside his Saudi counterpart in the capital Cairo on Sunday. Saudi Arabia had claimed success last month in removing the threat of heavy weapons to the kingdom and its neighbors, but the air war and border clashes have persisted. Human Rights Watch said in a report on Sunday that three bombings it had investigated in the northern province of Saada used cluster bombs, which are banned by most countries, adding that it suspected the munitions were fired by Saudi-led forces. Two of the alleged attacks in April wounded at least six Yemenis, including a 10-year old boy, but another incident on May 23 did not cause any casualties, it said. "These weapons can't distinguish military targets from civilians, and their unexploded submunitions threaten civilians, especially children, even long after the fighting," said Ole Solvang, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. Saudi officials did not provide an immediate response to the report. (Writing by Noah Browning and Amena Bakr; Editing by Greg Mahlich/Ruth Pitchford) ================================ Haykal Bafana ‏@BaFana3 · 44m44 minutes ago Sudden & drastic realignment of tribal forces in Shabwah to the Saleh/Houthi axis has caused wide loss of life in pro-Hadi ranks. # Shabwa, #Yemen : With Ataq city & critical Mafrag al Saeed crossroad under Saleh control, fighting will move situth to Yemen LNG at Balhaf. And certainly, we'll see Saleh/Houthi forces slso go north of Ataq & try to enter Wadi Hadhramaut via ancient Shabwah city. #Yemen Saudi-led coalition warplanes hit bases in Yemeni capital Sanaa Sun, May 31 03:12 AM EDT image SANAA (Reuters) - Warplanes from a Saudi-led coalition struck military bases aligned with Yemen's Houthi rebels in the capital Sanaa overnight and early Sunday morning, residents said. The raid hit an air base near Sanaa airport and a military installation overlooking the presidential palace compound. The Saudi-led coalition began air strikes in Yemen in March in a campaign to restore Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power. He fled in March, after Iranian-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital Sanaa in September and then thrust into central and south Yemen. Houthi television reported that the rebels fired 20 rockets at Saudi Arabia's southwestern border city of Najran on Saturday. A Saudi Ministry of Interior spokesman said a border guard was killed and seven others were wounded on Saturday in the Najran region due to rocket attacks from inside Yemen. "At 18:30 on Saturday as a border guard patrol was on duty at Al-Harth sector in Jazan region, it was hit by military shells launched from Yemeni territory," the spokesman said. The United Nations has said that more than 1,870 people have been killed and more than 7,000 wounded in the conflict since March 19. (Reporting by Mohamed Ghobari; Writing by Amena Bakr; Editing by Noah Browning and Jane Merriman)

Oil prices drop on possible Iran deal, dollar

Oil prices drop on possible Iran deal, dollar Mon, Mar 30 06:13 AM EDT image By Christopher Johnson LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices fell on Monday as officials from Iran and six world powers discussed a possible deal over Tehran's nuclear programme that could bring an end to sanctions and allow an increase in Iranian oil exports. The two sides have until the end of Tuesday to come up with an agreement at talks in Lausanne, Switzerland. Officials close to the talks have said progress has been made and many investors believe a deal is in the making. Few expect the talks to end without some sort of agreement. "Regarding Iran, there are two possible outcomes: a framework deal or an extended deadline," Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst at SEB Markets in Oslo, told the Reuters Global Oil Forum. Brent crude was down 40 cents at $56.01 a barrel by 0938 GMT as the market began to price in a deal with Iran. U.S. crude was down 80 cents at $48.07. Oil markets are well supplied and recent figures show global production outstripping demand by around 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd), filling oil inventories. "Further downward pressure may come at any time from a nuclear agreement with Iran," said Michael Wittner, analyst at Societe Generale. "If a framework agreement is reached, we would expect an immediate bearish knee-jerk reaction in the markets, with oil prices quickly losing on the order of $5." Barclays said a build in U.S. stocks would make its way into an oversupplied global market in the second quarter and that demand would unlikely be strong enough to support oil prices once that happened. "Continued dollar strength is (also) a headwind to the oil price recovery," Barclays said, forecasting the dollar would rise above parity with the euro by the fourth quarter of 2015. Few investors expect the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which pumps around a third of the world's oil, to restrain production to help push up prices. Oil producers are much more focused on maintaining market share, analysts say. Lower oil prices have encouraged some oil and gas companies to stop drilling, particularly in the United States, but this is unlikely to affect oil production until later this year. "The current rig count is pointing to U.S. production declining slightly sequentially in 2Q15 and 3Q15," Goldman Sachs said, adding that activity could bounce back in 2016 as drillers benefit from falling production costs. (Additional reporting by Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Jason Neely and Dale Hudson) ----------------------------- Air strike kills at least 40 at Yemen camp for displaced Mon, Mar 30 17:41 PM EDT image 1 of 11 By Mohammad Mukhashaf and Sami Aboudi ADEN (Reuters) - An air strike killed at least 40 people at a camp for displaced people in north Yemen on Monday, humanitarian workers said, in an attack which apparently targeted nearby Houthi fighters who are battling President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Yemen's state news agency Saba, which is under the control of the Houthis, said the camp at Haradh was hit by Saudi planes. It said the dead included women and children, and showed the bodies of five children laid out on a blood-streaked floor. A Saudi military spokesman said the kingdom was seeking clarification on the incident. "It could have been that the fighter jets replied to fire, and we cannot confirm that it was a refugee camp," Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri said. "We will ask the Yemeni official agencies to confirm that," he told reporters. Hadi's Foreign Minister Riyadh Yassin earlier blamed Houthi artillery for the explosion. The International Organisation for Migration, which initially reported 45 deaths, said 40 people were killed and 200 wounded - dozens of them severely. A humanitarian worker said earlier that the strike hit a truck of Houthi militiamen at the gate to the Mazraq camp, near Haradh, killing residents, guards and fighters. The medical aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres said at least 34 wounded people were brought to a hospital in Haradh which it supports. Another 29 were dead on arrival. "People in Al Mazraq camp have been living in very harsh conditions ... and now they have suffered the consequences of an air strike on the camp," said Pablo Marco, MSF operational manager for Yemen. Mazraq, in the province of Hajja next to the Saudi border, is a cluster of camps that are home to thousands of Yemenis displaced by over a decade of wars between the Houthis and the Yemeni state, as well as East African migrants. Saudi Arabia, supported by regional Sunni Muslim allies, launched an air campaign to support Hadi after he withdrew last month from the capital to Aden. He left Yemen on Thursday to attend an Arab summit and has not returned. The fighting has brought civil war to the Arabian Peninsula's poorest country. Sunni Muslim tribesmen allied with Hadi are battling northern Zaydi Shi'ites backed by soldiers loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who stepped down after 2011 mass protests against his 33 years in office. Yemen was already sliding into chaos with a growing southern secessionist movement and a covert U.S. drone campaign -- now stalled -- against al Qaeda in the east. The growing power of the Houthis, part of a Shi'ite minority that makes up about 20 percent of the country's 25 million people, also means Yemen has become the latest stage for Saudi Arabia's power struggle with Iran. The two regional rivals support opposing sides in Syria's civil war and in neighboring Lebanon. Tehran also supports and arms Shi'ite militias in Iraq, although it denies Riyadh's accusations that it supports Yemen's Houthis militarily. WARSHIPS FIRE ON HOUTHIS In the capital Sanaa, controlled by the Houthis, jets struck around the presidential palace overnight and made more raids throughout the day. Most of the air strikes, launched on Thursday, have taken place so far only at night. In the south, Houthi fighters closed in on the port city of Aden, the last major stronghold of Hadi supporters, and residents said warships believed to be Egyptian shelled a column of Houthis advancing along the coastal road. It was the first known report of naval forces taking part in the conflict. A Reuters reporter heard heavy explosions and saw a thick column of black smoke rising from the area about 15 km northeast of Aden, apparently after air strikes. Saudi-led war planes also shook buildings in Aden's Khor Maksar district when they fired at least one missile at the airport, where Houthi-allied fighters are based, residents said. A stray shell killed at least three people on a mini-bus in the same area, local fighters said. A Hadi aide told the Dubai-based al-Arabiya TV that Houthi fighters also shelled the president's private residence in Khor Maksar killing a number of guards. While Hadi's fighters ceded ground around Aden, Pakistan announced it would send troops to support the Saudi-led coalition. "We have already pledged full support to Saudi Arabia in its operation against rebels and will join the coalition," a Pakistani official said. In a cabinet statement, Saudi King Salman said Riyadh was open to a meeting of all Yemeni factions willing to preserve Yemen's security, under the auspices of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council. The Arab leaders agreed at their meeting in Egypt to form a unified military force to counter growing regional security threats such as the Yemen conflict. But working out the logistics of the force will be a protracted process and Yemen's rugged geography, internal power struggles and recent history all present challenges to any military campaign. Just four years after the 1990 unification of North and South Yemen, civil war erupted when southerners tried to break away, but were defeated by Saleh's northern forces. In the 1960s, intervention by Saudi Arabia and Egypt on opposing sides of a civil war in North Yemen led to a long and damaging military stalemate. Saudi Arabia says it is focusing for now on air strikes against the Houthis, rather than a ground campaign, promising to increase pressure on them over coming days. On Sunday, sources said Yemeni exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) were running as normal despite the shutdown of major seaports. But French oil firm Total said on Monday operations at its Block 10 had been reduced, with gas production maintained only for local power generation and to supply nearby areas. Several countries have evacuated citizens from Yemen in recent days. About 500 Pakistani nationals were flown out of the Red Sea port of Hodeida on Sunday, and India said on Monday it was preparing to fly out 500 people from Sanaa. (Additional reporting by William Maclean, Noah Browning and Rania El Gamal in Dubai, Angus McDowall in Riyadh, Stephanie Nebehay in Lausanne; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Catherine Evans) ----------------------------------