THere are airstrikes everyday. And worse than the actual explosion in the anticipation of the blast. Listening to the whisper of the jets become a scream become a roar and then your world crashes about you as the shockwave blasts through the neighbourhood. Yes, the Saudi coalition IS targeting residential areas. The price of everything is out of reach of most Yemenis. In some cases tenfold increases. The streets are fairly empty these days as people fail to be able to fill their cars with petrol, and even bus and taxi drives are sitting out until something changes. they simply cant work - it is economically unviable. We just had eid al-Adha but more than sheep, goats and cows were being slaughtered. The Saudi backed air campaign continued right through the three days of eid and even intensified. Everytime I turn on the radio for a local update I am regaled with the sadistic football scores - 27 civilians gunned down in Hajja from Apache fire, 5 killed in airstrikes on a police station in Sanaa, another 7 killed in Marib street near the derelict textiles factory, killed in Asbahi, Hezyez, Nahdha, 50 street, 40 street, 70 street....never ending scores and updates. Where we sit here, we cannot see why Saudi Arabia opened fire upon this country when this country had not fired a shot at them. Simple shift of the balance of power. Yemenis have no business in the way their country is run. The sudden unexpected violence from the Saudi airstrikes pushed fence sitters to join the Houthi efforts, even people who didn't much like the Houthis have joined them in defence of their country - as they see it - Jihad in defence of Muslim Lands. Daesh has even popped its head up amongst this swamp of conflict. They have claimed responsibility for numerous mosque bombings around Sanaa since before the war began. Scores killed many more maimed. Daesh in Yemen is a splinter group of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Why they broke away is unknown to me. AQAP had been heading down a more humanitarian path in Yemen after seeing the success of the Houthis in winning hearts and minds through other means. AQAP is heavily (commonly cited by locals) infiltrated by the Saudi security agencies. My opinion is that these infiltraters fueled the split and the break away group pledged allegience to Daesh. Their targets are purely mosques, particularly Zaidi mosques. Before this there was no serious rift between Zaidi (Shiah) and the Sunni communities. Daesh bombings have tried to open this divide. It is widely believed that Daesh in Yemen is merely Saudi security services making mischief amonst us. No one takes them seriously, they are unlikely to win support or become a force in Yemen. We look now into our broken futures in Yemen. Infrastructure and civil services decimated, no work, no money, no hope...we hope for a solution to this devastation soon, very soon. But we are realistic that this is infact far away. Yemenis are patient, very patient.
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