Yemeni government's spokesman Rajeh Badi (R) and Russian Ambassador to Yemen Vladimir Dedushkin (C) attend a press conference in Aden, Yemen, on March 20, 2019. Yemen's government accused on Wednesday the Houthi rebels of pushing for a new escalation of armed confrontations in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah despite the cease-fire brokered by the United Nations. (Xinhua)
ADEN, Yemen, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Yemen's government accused on Wednesday the Houthi rebels of pushing for a new escalation of armed confrontations in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah despite the cease-fire brokered by the United Nations.
The government's spokesman, Rajeh Badi, announced during a press conference held in the southern port city of Aden that the Houthi rebels are continuing to dispatch military reinforcements into Hodeidah in an attempt to "spark the situation militarily again."
"The Houthis exploited the halt of fighting in Hodeidah and considered it as an opportunity to spark military operations in different areas of the country," said the government's spokesman after a meeting with the Russian ambassador who arrived in Aden earlier in the day.
He said that "the situation is very dangerous in Hodeidah as Houthi reinforcements are continuing to arrive till this moment, in addition to planting landmines and digging underground trenches in the city."
Badi considered the dispatching of reinforcements into Hodeidah as an official Houthi abandonment of Stockholm Agreement that was signed between the two warring parties in December last year.
The government's spokesman concluded his press conference by calling on the United Nations and the international community to strictly pressure Houthis and abort their preparations to resume fighting in Hodeidah.
The government's statements came just several hours after the UN special envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths reported a "significant progress" toward an agreement between warring parties to withdraw troops in the region of the key port of Hodeidah.
Griffiths said that following constructive discussions with both the government and the Houthi rebels, reported "significant progress towards an agreement to implement phase one of the redeployments of the Hodeidah agreement."
The redeployment of troops from the city and port of Hodeidah and other two minor ports, Saleef and Ras Isa, is part of the Stockholm Agreement the two sides reached in December 2018 under UN auspices. The deal also includes a cease-fire across the Hodeidah governorate.
In February, the two parties agreed on the first phase of the redeployment, which calls for withdrawal of forces from the three ports as well as the Red Sea mills, where enough grain is stored to feed 3.7 million people in the starving Arab country.
The warring forces have so far failed to withdraw from Hodeidah and its southern districts in accordance with the UN-sponsored Stockholm Peace Agreement.
The deal aimed to avert an all-out offensive on the lifeline port city, which is the key entry of Yemen's most commercial imports and international aid.
The Saudi-led military coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 to support the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after Houthi rebels forced him into exile and seized much of the country's north, including the capital Sanaa and Hodeidah.
The four-year civil war has killed more than 10,000 people, mostly civilians, displaced 3 million others, and pushed the country to the brink of famine.
