2020: Riyadh Agreement unsettling Houthis in Yemen

Noura Bendari

The year 2020 has come to an end. However, Yemen continues to suffer because of the crimes of the Iran-backed Houthi militia.

The Houthis keep using their terrorist tools to repress the Yemeni people and implement the agenda of Iran’s mullahs for controlling Yemen and turning it into yet another Iranian province.

Yemeni provinces falling under the control of the Houthi militia, especially Yemeni capital Sana’a, have been suffering for more than six years now. They reel under famine, poverty, and pandemics. The residents of the same provinces are escaping in their thousands because of Houthi repression and violence.

Civilians targeted

The Houthis worked to control the largest swath of Yemen during 2020. This brought it to a collision course with government troops and the Saudi-led Arab coalition.

Civilians were caught in the middle of confrontations in this regard. Civilians were at the center of numerous Houthi attacks in a number of Yemeni provinces.

In November 2020, the United Nations refugee agency said 1,508 civilians had been killed in Yemen between January and September 2020.

Around 42% of these victims were children and women, the agency said.

It added that between October and November of the same year, 110 civilians had been killed in the southwestern province of Taizz and 139 others in the eastern province of Hudaydah.

The legitimate Yemeni government held the Houthis responsible for the killing of these civilians.

Meanwhile, the media section of the Yemeni army referred to the escape of tens of thousands of families from areas controlled by the Houthis for fear of their lives.