By DPA,
Sana’a (Yemen) : More than 100 Shia rebel fighters have been killed in fierce clashes with government forces in northwest Yemen during the past two days, the government said in a statement Sunday.
The statement, faxed to DPA, said two field commanders of the Houthi rebel group were among those killed in the Harf Sufian district of the Amran province.
“More than 100 bodies of Houthis were found on the sides of roads in and outside Harf Sufian district,” the statement said.
It identified the two slain Houthi leaders as Mouhssen al-Qaoud and Saleh Jarman.
The statement said the bodies were found the bodies after the government forces restored controlled over the district from the rebels.
The rebel group denied the reported capture of the district, saying planes shelled it for the last time Sunday morning.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh renewed his government’s offer to end the fighting with the rebels on Friday.
Saleh said the ceasefire offer “is based on an unconditional commitment” by the rebels to the terms of a six-point peace initiative announced by the government last week.
He said if rebels rejected peace and continued the fighting, “we will face this sedition in a decisive way and with all capabilities we have got.”
Authorities offered last week six conditions for halting the massive military attack against the rebels in Saada, some 240 km northwest of Sana’a.
The conditions included the rebels’ withdrawal from all districts of Saada and mountainous sites and giving up military hardware they have seized from the army, the official Saba news agency said.
Also among the conditions was a call for the rebels to clarify the fate of a German family of five and a British engineer taken hostage in Saada in June.
The six people were among a group of foreign hostages – seven Germans, a Briton and a South Korean. They were abducted by armed men in Saada, where the rebels operate.
Three of them, two German women and a South Korean female teacher, were found dead two days after the abduction.
The rebel leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has rejected the six conditions mentioned by the authorities.
Scores of insurgents and civilians have been killed since the army began its onslaught on strongholds of the Houthi rebel group on the border with Saudi Arabia Aug 11.
The offensive included aerial, artillery and missile strikes on strongholds of the rebels in strategic heights overlooking the borders with Saudi Arabia.