RIYADH: Shells fired from Yemen killed five people in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday in a second day of cross-border bombing blamed on Huthi rebels, civil defence authorities said. Two civilians in a car and two passers-by were killed by a shell in the city of Najran, while 11 others were wounded, the civil defence department said in a statement carried by the SPA state news agency. A prison security officer was also killed and another wounded when a second shell landed on their patrol in the same area, the statement said. Meanwhile, US diplomat John Kerry was to hold talks with Riyadh late on Wednesday on a “humanitarian pause” in Saudi-led military operations in Yemen as more Saudis were killed in cross-border attacks. Riyadh has said it is considering temporary halts in air raids to allow aid deliveries into Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition took action on March 26 in an effort to halt an advance by Iran-backed rebels. Twenty-two humanitarian organisations warned their emergency aid operations in Yemen could grind to a halt due to fuel shortages, urging immediate opening of roads as well as ending air and sea blockades. There has been growing concern for civilians as the conflict drags on, and on Wednesday 32 people were reported to have died while trying to flee the southern city of Aden by sea. A health official accused the Huthi rebels of killing the civilians and wounding another 67 in the shelling that hit a fishing harbour and a barge. Before he flew to Saudi Arabia, Kerry told reporters in Djibouti he would raise the issue of a temporary halt to air strikes with officials in Riyadh. “We will be discussing the nature of the pause and how it might be implemented,” Kerry said. “We are deeply concerned about the humanitarian situation that is unfolding in Yemen... For the time being the immediate crisis is the humanitarian one.” As well as international concern over the growing civilian death toll from the air campaign and fighting, deliveries of fuel, food and medicine have been severely crippled in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula nation. The United Nations says at least 1,200 people have been killed in Yemen since March 19, roughly half of them civilians. The air strikes began as anti-government fighters approached Aden, forcing President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi to flee to Riyadh. The new UN envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, is to follow Kerry to Riyadh Thursday in a bid to relaunch peace talks as clashes rage in Aden, where rebel gunfire also killed a pro-government general on Wednesday. A military official said General Ali Nasser Hadi — no relation to Yemen’s exiled president — was shot dead in Aden. He headed loyalist forces in three southern provinces.
