Yemen says its war with rebels is just beginning

SANAA (AFP) -- Nearly three months after Yemen launched a blistering ground and air offensive against Shiite rebels, President Ali Abdullah Saleh says the real war in the north has yet to begin.

Saleh vowed to crush the Zaidi rebellion when Yemen launched Operation Scorched Earth on August 11, and on Saturday he again pledged to keep the military campaign going.

“The real combat only started three days ago,” Saleh said at a ceremony to inaugurate Yemeni gas exports from a new liquefied natural gas plant on the Gulf of Aden.

He was referring to fighting that erupted this week between rebels in his impoverished country and forces from oil giant Saudi Arabia on the borders between the two countries -- although he did not mention the Saudis directly.

Clashes between Saleh's forces and rebels -- also known as Huthis -- in their rugged Saada province bastion spilled across the frontier on Tuesday when rebels killed a Saudi border guard.

Rebel forces also seized at least two small villages in the area of Jebel al-Dukhan mountain which straddles the border.

A day later the Saudis launched a huge counter-offensive, sending warplanes to bomb and rocket rebel positions.

According to Saudi sources, at least seven Saudis have been killed in fighting since Tuesday and four soldiers are now listed as missing.

While officials from both countries say the Saudi attacks are taking place only inside Saudi Arabia, the rebels and a Saudi government adviser have said jets attacked rebels well inside Saada province.

Saleh on Saturday insisted he will “never stop this war, no matter how high the financial and human cost.”

“Columns of martyrs from among our best officers and soldiers and our civilians are being killed each day,” he said in Balhaf.

The Yemeni army has not provided any toll for the number of soldiers killed in the fighting that has raged in and around Saada, but it has killed hundreds of people according to estimates.

Meanwhile, the United Nations has said that 55,000 people have fled their homes since the army began its offensive in August.

Saleh, himself a Zaidi, has attended several ceremonies in recent weeks for high-ranking officers killed in combat.

The authorities accuse the Zaidis of seeking to reinstate the imamate, a form of clerical rule that ended in a republication revolution in 1962.

The rebels deny both claims, and in turn have accused the Sanaa government of bringing in Saudi warplanes to support the army.

Saleh on Saturday insisted that he will never allow the rebels to reinstate the imamate.

Fighting between government forces and the Huthis, named after their late commander, Hussein Badr Eddin al-Huthi, has killed thousands since it first broke out in 2004.

The conflict has triggered a humanitarian crisis, complicated by a dire shortage of food and other basic necessities, in one of the world's poorest nations.

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