Civilian casualties due to ongoing clashes in Taiz rise to 100 dead and wounded
TAIZ, April 26 (YPA) – Local residents in the old city of Taiz on Thursday have said that the attack launched the Islah militias on the city on the pretext of searching for wanted people from the radical Salafist group Abu Abbas resulted in the death and injury of more than 100 citizens, mostly children and women.
The residents explained that Abu Abbas militias fortified themselves in homes of civilians and faced the campaign launched by Islah militias, (the branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Yemen), with a counter-campaign using snipers and thermal rockets.
They noted that the civilians remained in their homes under the fire of the two sides, calling for help, but no one gives a dim about their cry “while artillery shells were falling on houses and their voices reverberating throughout the city.”
Since Thursday morning, the old city has been witnessing attacks that the owners of shops have not been able to open, which doubling food and nutritional crisis that the people of the city have suffered as a result of blockade imposed by the coalition countries since more than four years ago and malnutrition getting higher in Yemen as a whole.
Other sources said that many residents of the old City were forced to flee to mosques as safe places, and its minarets launched calls for those who rescued them from what they called the storm owners, referring to the militias of the coalition which named its war on Yemen with the decisive storm, but to no avail, in the time when the loudspeakers were repeating calls, the shells were falling on the city on both sides.
As clashes between coalition rival militias increase, the health situation in the city is worsening, residents said.
“The situation is unbearable in the old city, there are wounded civilians. There are no medical centers to receive them, and they are being rushed to homes or mosques,” one of the local residents added.
According to sources, “the hospitals in Taiz City started evacuating the patients and the majority of doctors and workers left their homes before neighborhoods and streets are closed after the fighting intensified in the east of the city.”
The governor of Taiz, appointed by the exiled President ” Hadi”, sent a memorandum to the commander of the so-called “35 Armored Brigade” and Abu al-Abbas, “to hand over the wanted (extremists of Salafist militias) included in a list of Police director of Taiz province were accused of assassinating security personnel. ”
Over the past two weeks, Taiz has been witnessing violent confrontations between Salafist militias led by Abu Abbas and Islah party militias led by the city’s security, following which hundreds of families have been displaced from the city to Sanaa run by the Supreme Political Council, seeking a safe place to stay.
E.M