Earlier this month, Yemeni forces launched an offensive using air strikes, tanks and artillery in what officials say is an attempt to crush the revolt.

More than 100,000 people in Yemen, many of them children, have fled their homes during a recent surge in fighting between the government and Houthi rebels, a UN agency said.
The children’s agency UNICEF and other UN aid bodies expressed serious concern about what they called a deteriorating situation in the north of the country and described conditions as critical in some areas, Reuters reported.
The refugee agency UNHCR said in Geneva it was appealing for a ceasefire to allow civilians to escape the fighting and enable aid workers to resume interrupted deliveries of humanitarian goods to the conflict zone.
The conflict with the Houthi Shiites in mostly Sunni Muslim Yemen has flared intermittently since 2004. Authorities accuse the Houthis of trying to expand their influence, but the fighters say they are defending their villages against government oppression.

Major Offensive
Earlier this month, Yemeni forces launched an offensive using air strikes, tanks and artillery in what officials say is an attempt to crush the revolt. On Friday, President Ali Abdullah Saleh reiterated ceasefire conditions to the rebels to try to end the fighting, which has killed dozens of people. “We offer those elements another chance to resort to peace and return to the righteous path,“ he said in a Ramadan speech on state television.
The Houthis have so far rejected the six conditions, which include a rebel withdrawal, removal of rebel checkpoints and the clarification of the fate of nine kidnapped foreigners.
“It is estimated that over 100,000 persons have been displaced by the latest round of fighting, (and) many of them are children,“ said Aboudou Karimou Adjibade, UNICEF representative in Yemen. “It is crucial that we gain immediate access to them to provide them with the assistance they need.“

Aid Appeal
The agency’s spokeswoman in Geneva, Veronique Taveau, told reporters the United Nations would launch a so-called flash--or one-off--appeal for aid next week.
Previous clashes between government troops and rebels had already affected about 120,000 people, UN officials said.
UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic quoted refugees as saying the situation was critical in the rebel stronghold of Saada--where fighting had displaced some 35,000 people in the last two weeks--in areas further north and in El Sufyan in a neighboring district.
He said roads to the Saada governorate were blocked and there was no access to the conflict area by air. Many people seeking to flee were paying smugglers to get out, UNHCR said.
The Rome-based UN World Food Program said that on Friday it began distributing a one-month ration of cereals, pulses, vegetable oil, salt and sugar to 10,000 displaced people. It airlifted 40 metric tons of high-energy biscuits from Dubai last week and planned another airlift in the next few days.

The police announced Saturday that 837 road mishaps were registered over the week across the country in which 170 people died and 1,119 were injured.
“Thirty-five percent of the crashes were related to the overturning of vehicles,“ head of Traffic Control Department, Colonel Hossein Alishahi, told IRIB.
“Most cars are unsafe and are not equipped with anti-lock braking systems and airbags. This increases the number of casualties,“ he said. According to Alishahi, at least 20 people were killed and 155 others were sent to hospitals in the past 24 hours.
The police officer further pointed out that failing to comply with the double white lines and flouting driving regulations on the highways and freeways are among the reasons of road mishaps.
Alishahi believes that obeying traffic rules should become part of the culture for controlling road disasters.
According to police fatigue and sleepiness behind the wheel are the main causes of the accidents.
Experts believe that behavioral disorder, reckless driving, violating traffic laws, speeding and ignoring others’ rights and liberties are other factors behind the mishaps.
Dr. Majid Abhari, a sociology professor, said recently that Iran’s road mishaps claim one life every 25 minutes.
“Motor vehicle accidents can mean sudden death and have a shocking impact on families,“ Abhari noted.
More than 100,000 Iranians died in road crashes in the last six years.

CIA interrogators used a handgun and an electric drill to try to frighten a captured Al-Qaeda commander into giving up information, according to a long-concealed agency report due to be made public next week, former and current US officials who have read the document said.
The tactics--which one official described as a threatened execution--were used on Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri, according to the CIA’s inspector general’s report on the agency’s interrogation program. Nashiri, who was captured in November 2002 and held for four years in one of the CIA’s “black site“ prisons, ultimately became one of three Al-Qaeda chieftains subjected to a form of simulated drowning known as waterboarding.
The report also says that a mock execution was staged in a room next to one terrorism suspect, according to Newsweek magazine, citing two sources for its information. The magazine was the first to publish details from the report, which it did on its Web site late Friday.
A federal judge in New York has ordered a redacted version of the classified IG report to be publicly released Monday, in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. Since June, lawyers for the Justice Department and the CIA have been scrutinizing the document to determine how much of it can be made public. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has been weighing the report’s findings as part of a broader probe into the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation methods.
The IG’s report, written in 2004, offers new details about Nashiri’s interrogation, including the incidents in which the detainee reportedly was threatened with death or grave injury if he refused to cooperate, one current and one former US official told Washington Post. Both officials have seen classified versions of the report.
In one instance, an interrogator showed Nashiri a gun and sought to frighten the detainee into thinking he would be shot, the sources said. In a separate encounter, a power drill was held near Nashiri’s body and repeatedly turned on and off, said the officials, who spoke about the report on the condition of anonymity because it remains classified.
The federal torture statute prohibits a US national from threatening anyone in his or her custody with imminent death.
Three months before Nashiri’s capture, the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel --Jay S. Bybee, now a federal judge--advised the CIA in an August 2002 memo that threats of “imminent death“ were not illegal unless they deliberately produced prolonged mental harm. Independent legal experts have called that interpretation too hedged and thus too lax.
The CIA declined late Friday to comment on the contents of the report, but an agency spokesman noted that all the incidents described in the document have been reviewed in detail by government prosecutors.
Nashiri, who remains in US custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was the alleged mastermind of the 1999 bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 American sailors and nearly sank the vessel. Before his capture by CIA officers, he allegedly headed Al-Qaeda’s operations in the Persian Gulf, and he was the most senior member of the terrorist organization in US custody at the time of his arrest.