Landmine Blast Killed Two In Yemen’s Red Sea Port City

Yemens Red Sea port city of Hodeidah

SANAA, Aug 24 (NNN-SABA) – Two people were killed yesterday, in a landmine explosion in Yemen’s Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, Yemen’s Ministry of Human Rights said in a statement.

The landmine exploded when the two civilians walked over it, on the side of a road in the al-Hayet area, in the southern district of al-Durayhimi, killing them on the spot.

Hodeidah witnessed a shaky cease-fire between Yemeni government forces and the Houthi militia, since they reached a UN-sponsored truce in Stockholm in Dec, 2018.

The port city is controlled by the Houthis, while the government forces have advanced to the southern districts.

In another accident elsewhere in the country yesterday, a government soldier was seriously wounded in a mine blast, during the process of removing it from a field in the district of Raghwan, in the north-eastern province of Marib, according to local medics.

Raghwan is a frontline between government troops and the Houthi rebels, but fighting has been largely eased for more than a year. The troops control much of the oil-rich province.

In Apr, the internationally-recognised Yemeni government made an urgent appeal for international assistance, to clear landmines and other explosive remnants of war.

Yemeni demining experts said, more than one million landmines have been laid, since the outbreak of the civil war in late 2014, when the Houthi militia took control of several northern provinces and forced the Yemeni government out of the capital, Sanaa.