Bombing and heavy fighting break Yemen truce: Residents

Saudi-led air strikes and heavy shelling between warring factions shook several cities in Yemen on July 11, residents said, violating a United Nations humanitarian truce which took effect just before midnight. 

The U.N.-brokered pause in the fighting was meant to last a week to allow aid deliveries to the country's 21 million people who have endured more than three months of bombing and civil war. 

A coalition of Arab states has been bombing the Iranian-allied Houthi rebel movement - Yemen's dominant force - since late March in a bid to restore to power President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has fled to Riyadh. 

That coalition said on July 11 that the Yemeni government in exile had not asked it to pause, according to a news flash on Saudi-owned Arabiya TV. 

Yemeni government officials were not immediately available to comment, but the U.N. Secretary General's office said before the truce that President Hadi had "communicated his acceptance of the pause to the coalition to ensure their support." 

Air raids pounded Houthi and Yemeni army units in the capital Sanaa and in the group's stronghold province of Saada along the border with Saudi Arabia. 

Fighting raged in the embattled southern city of Taiz and the eastern province of Mareb amid intense artillery exchanges between Houthi fighters and local militiamen backed up by Arab air strikes. 

In Aden, one of the country's most deprived and war-torn areas, witnesses said Houthi forces fired mortars and Katyusha rockets towards opposition fighters based in northern areas and around the city's international airport. 

Bombing by the Arab alliance and fighting have killed more than 3,000 people since March 26. 
 
"Tragic"

The Houthis, who...