Reuters, Cairo :Saudi-led air raids hit the Yemen capital Sanaa overnight, targeting forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the east and south of the city, residents said on Tuesday.The strikes are the first to hit the capital after a five-day ceasefire ended late on Sunday, although military operations resumed earlier on Monday in northern Saada province and in the southern city of Aden.Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Muslim allies have been conducting an offensive against Iranian-allied Houthis and units loyal to Saleh for more than seven weeks, part of a campaign to restore exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power.The truce ended despite appeals by the United Nations and aid groups for extra time to allow badly needed humanitarian supplies into the country of 25 million people, one of the poorest in the Middle East.Houthi sources also said they had fired mortar rounds at several areas in Saudi Arabia’s southern Najran province late on Monday and that they had engaged in clashes with Saudi forces near the border area.Reuters could not immediately verify that information.Houthi rebels have been shelling some populated areas across the borders between Yemen and Saudi Arabia.Meanwhile, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned in a new report that the crisis in Yemen could open a corridor for jihadist movements through Somalia, which is located just across the Gulf of Aden.Ban said in a report to the U.N. Security Council circulated Monday that security in Somalia and the region is threatened by the Islamist militant group al-Shabab. He pointed to continuing al-Shabab attacks in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu and the country’ central and southern regions as well as increased activities in Somalia’s semi-autonomous region of Puntland and the massacre of 147 students at Garissa University College in neighboring Kenya in April.”At the same time, the crisis in Yemen has the potential to further destabilize the region and open a corridor for jihadist movements through Somalia,” Ban warned.Yemen had long suffered from desperate poverty, political dysfunction and al-Qaida’s most dangerous offshoot. It became more unstable in recent months as Houthi rebels, who are Shiite, seized much of the country and chased Yemen’s internationally recognized president into exile. That prompted the Saudis and other Gulf Arab states to intervene.
