Region

SIDI IFNI, Morocco — Green technology to turn fog into fresh water straight from the tap has put an end to exhausting daily treks to distant wells by village women in southwest Morocco.

Families in five highland Berber communities have begun to benefit from "fog harvesting", a technique devised in Chile two decades ago and since taken up in countries from Peru to Namibia and South Africa.

On the summit of a mountain named Boutmezguida, which looms over the villages at 1,225 metres, thick fog shrouds about 40 finely meshed panels designed to trap water and relay it to a network of pipes.

To have water running from a faucet at home is a "revolution" for inhabitants of the semi-arid mountains known as the Anti-Atlas, says Aissa Derhem, the chairman of an active regional association called Dar Si Hmad for Development, Education and Culture (DSH).

DSH prides itself on building "the world's largest fog-collection and distribution system" and helping locals in the Sidi Ifni region — Derhem's birthplace — to learn to operate it, after repeated droughts and scarce rain.

"Our rain here is the fog," Derhem adds.

Tiny droplets are caught on the mesh while fog wafts through panels. The harvesters mix all they catch with more water derived from drilling, then supply the villages on the lower slopes.

Derhem first heard about fog harvesting 20 years ago. A few years later on returning to Sidi Ifni, he realised that the local climate was similar to that of the Andes in South America.

DSH joined forces with Fog Quest, a Canadian charity whose volunteers work in a range of developing countries. North Africa's first pilot project became operational after almost a decade's work refining techniques.

'An imitation of nature'

The valves were opened at Sidi Ifni for the first time to mark World Water Day, March 22. Ever since, "92 households, or nearly 400 people", have enjoyed running water at home, says Mounir Abbar, the project's technical manager.

"Morocco has a lot of fog because of three phenomena: the presence of an anticyclone from the Azores [north Atlantic islands], a cold air current and a mountainous obstacle," Derhem says.

The mesh that traps water is "merely an imitation of nature", he adds, pointing out how spiders have always caught minute droplets of water in their webs.

"This is ecological and enables us to look after the regional water table, which we have been emptying away," Derhem says.

The scheme will be extended to other villages and, in time, advocates hope, to other parts of the country.

In the village of Douar Id Achour, residents are proud of their new taps, for good reason. Women and children used to spend an average of four hours a day on a round trip to a well, even longer in dry summer.

"I filled two 20 litre [5.3 gallon] containers four times a day," says Massouda Boukhalfa, 47. "But even those 160 litres wasn't enough for us, because we have cattle as well."

'Ready for export'

During droughts, water was carried in by tanker trunk. "That took a fortnight and cost 150 dirhams [13.7 euros], [$15.6] for 5,000 litres on average," young resident Houcine Soussane recalls.

According to Dar Si Hmad, 7,000 litres of fog water cost three times less than before, even with a fee of 20 dirhams to each household for the right to a counter.

Villagers today have more time to collect the nutty fruit of argan trees and extract its prized and potentially lucrative oil, used in cooking, skin care and easing arthritis. Reputed as an anti-ageing product, argan oil has been taken up abroad as an ingredient in high-end cosmetics.

"Our women and daughters no longer wear themselves out. They go to school and are safe," 54 year-old villager Lahcen Hammou Ali sums up. "With the time saved, we can pay for water all year by producing a bottle of argan oil."

DSH next wants to supply fog water to as many villages as possible in the area. It also plans to replace mesh in the panels with a new variety that can resist wind speeds of 120 kilometres per hour.

The panels were perfected on Moroccan soil with help from the German charity Wasserstiftung, and successfully passed the testing phase.

"The nets are now ready for export to other towns in Morocco, in all the mountainous regions and along the seafront," Derham says, hopeful they can be deployed in all highland areas where fogbanks are frequent.

Sanaa — A car bomb near a mosque in Yemen's capital Saturday killed two people, as Saudi-led warplanes bombarded second city Aden, after peace talks in Geneva ended without agreement.

The explosion in Sanaa, controlled by Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels, went off outside the Kobbat Al Mehdi Mosque as Shiite Muslims emerged from midday prayers, witnesses and security sources said.

As well as the two dead, another 16 people were wounded, medical officials said.

The blast, which comes as Muslims observe the fasting month of Ramadan, damaged the entrance of the mosque and shattered the windows of a nearby house, an AFP photographer reported.

The Daesh terror group claimed responsibility for the attack, SITE Intelligence Group reported, the latest in a series that has targeted Sanaa, which the Houthi rebels seized in September.

Since then they have expanded their control to other parts of Sunni-majority Yemen, including Aden in the south, forcing President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and his government to flee to Saudi Arabia.

On Wednesday, at least 31 people were killed and dozens wounded in five simultaneous bombings, also claimed by the radical Sunni Muslim jihadist group at Shiite mosques and offices in Sanaa.

Saturday's car attack came hours after Saudi-led warplanes launched 15 strikes against Houthi targets in the port city of Aden.

A pro-government military source said the dawn strikes pounded the northern, eastern and western approaches to Aden, to isolate the Houthis and support forces loyal to Hadi.

"The objective is to close the noose around the Houthi rebels in Aden and assist the Popular Resistance Committees," said the source.

Anti-rebel forces comprising pro-government fighters, Sunni tribes, and southern separatists are referred to as Popular Resistance Committees.

They have been locked in fierce fighting against the Houthis in Aden, which has been devastated by Saudi-led strikes launched in March in support of Hadi.

On Saturday the rebels shelled several neighbourhoods of Aden, killing four people and wounding several others, the military source said, a toll confirmed by hospital officials.

Peace talks deadlocked 

The violence came after UN’s special envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed announced Friday in Geneva that talks between the warring sides ended without agreement.

“I won’t beat around the bush. There was no kind of agreement reached,” the Mauritanian diplomat told reporters.

Yemen’s rivals blamed each other for the deadlock.

“I am disappointed. We did everything to make the talks a success but there were too many obstacles, especially the demand for a withdrawal,” rebel delegation head Hamza Al Houthi told AFP.

Yemen’s exiled foreign minister blamed the lack of progress on the rebel delegation.

“We really came here with a big hope... but unfortunately the Houthi delegation did not allow us really to reach real progress as we expected,” said Riad Yassin.

The government is demanding in line with a UN Security Council resolution that the rebels withdraw from the territory they control, but the Houthis have called for an unconditional halt to the air strikes before they consider a pause in fighting.

The rebels are backed by fighters loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was forced to step down after a year of bloody protests calling for an end to his three decades of iron-fisted rule.

More than 2,600 have been killed in the fighting which has also left 80 per cent of the population — 20 million people — in need of urgent humanitarian aid, according to UN estimates.

The situation is particularly grave in Aden, where residents have complained of food and water shortages, while medics speak of a rapidly deteriorating health situation and the spread of disease.

A boat laden with supplies, including flour, that was due to dock in Aden this week had to divert course to Hodeida in western Yemen due to the fighting, said Aden Deputy Governor Nayef Al Bakri.

He accused the Houthis of deliberately forcing the vessel, chartered by the UN’s World Food Programme, to change course because they control the port in Hodeida.

HABANIYAH, Iraq — Parading across a desert base, hundreds of Sunni tribesmen who graduated a crash-training course stood ready to take on the Daesh terror group on behalf of a government that many believed left them to die at the hands of the extremists.

Among them were tribesmen who watched as Iraqi forces abandoned Ramadi a month ago to Daesh. Their suspicions towards the Shiite-led government in Baghdad could be seen as they pushed forward to receive their first government salary in 18 months, with one brandishing a Kalashnikov assault rifle as he neared the front.

"For a year and a half we told them we need weapons, we need salaries, we need food, we need protection, but our requests were ignored until the disaster of Ramadi happened," said Sheikh Rafa Al Fahdawi, one of the leaders of the Al Bu Fahad tribe of Anbar province.

But money and weapons alone won't be enough to repair the mistrust between Baghdad and the Sunni tribes it now needs to battle Daesh, which holds about a third of the country and neighboring Syria in its self-declared "caliphate". After Iraqi forces abandoned Ramadi and then turned to Shiite militias for help, both sides remain suspicious of each other, threatening any effort to work together.

Iraq's Sunnis long have complained of discrimination and abuse since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and replaced it with a government dominated by the country's Shiite majority. But the collapse of Iraqi forces in Ramadi on May 17 crystalised the fears many Sunni tribesmen had when their pleas for help went unanswered.

That night, silence fell over Ramadi after weeks of Daesh-launched suicide car bomb attacks and gun battles, said Sunni tribesmen who spoke to The Associated Press. The Iraqi forces there, including its vaunted special forces units, slipped out of the city, leaving Sunni tribesmen armed only with light weapons and their personal vehicles to battle the extremists, they said. The city quickly fell, forcing the tribesmen to flee.

“We felt there was no hope when the military left,” said Omar Al Fahdawi, a member of the Al Bu Fahad tribe from Ramadi. “For a year and a half we have been begging for government support, for weapons, for help. But we were forgotten.”

A senior Iraqi intelligence official and operations commander in Anbar province confirmed that counterterrorism forces were the first to pull out of Ramadi, abandoning 89 Humvees and armored cars, as well as rifles and mortars. The official said that the counterterrorism units were ambushed by some 200 militant fighters, breaking their line of defence and forcing them to withdraw, leaving the army and tribal fighters outnumbered and outgunned. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t authorised to brief journalists. Iraq’s defence ministry refused to comment.

Fahdawis and many of their fellow tribesmen are now displaced and require government support for their families, most of whom now live in camps or temporary housing in the Anbar town of Khalidiyah.

But they are lucky compared to others. The Daesh group has massacred hundreds of men, women and children with Anbar’s Al Bu Nimr tribe for resisting their rule and cooperating with the Iraqi government.

Yet despite being targeting by the Daesh group, many of the Sunni tribesmen from Anbar who spoke to the AP said the Baghdad government viewed them as being complicit in the extremists’ advance, solely because they share the same sect.

“They blame us for what happened,” said Omar Al Fahdawi. The military tells us “you’re the ones who got us here; you’re the ones who killed us”.

Yet on Wednesday, 500 men from some of Anbar’s biggest tribes marched in formation at Iraq’s Habaniyah military base in the province’s western desert, part of a force the Iraqi government is quickly trying to make battle-ready.

As many as 80 US advisers are now at Habaniyah, the first of a batch of 450 additional troops that President Barack Obama agreed to send to Iraq last week. The advisers declined to speak with journalists on hand for the ceremony.

Hameed Al Zerjawi, Iraq’s secretary-general for national security, said the American advisers will work with Iraqi security forces, which then will train militia fighters. He said the Americans will not engage directly with the militias.

That decision comes after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi summoned the Popular Mobilisation Forces to Anbar after the fall of Ramadi. The government-backed fighters, made up predominantly of Iranian-backed Shiite militias, now outnumber Iraqi security forces in all of Iraq and are considered the most effective fighting force on the ground today.

But while the Popular Mobilisation Forces insist they aren’t sectarian, human rights groups have accused individual Shiite militias fighting within the structure of harassing or attacking Sunni civilians, as well as destroying their homes and businesses.

Ali Khalil, a spokesman for the Iraqi national security apparatus and for the Popular Mobilisation Forces in Anbar, acknowledged the fear Sunnis have of the militias, but said they were needed for the fight.

“The Shiites are stronger and larger than the Sunnis,” he said. “There are some mixed divisions, although none of them are here in Anbar.”

For those Sunni tribesmen at Habaniyah, that was little comfort.

“They are Iranian militias — nothing more,” said Majeed Al Fahdawi, Omar’s brother. “We’ve communicated our concerns to the government but they don’t listen. We’re seen as traitors if we speak against them.” 

CAIRO — French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius warned Israel and the Palestinians on Saturday that the stalemate in the peace process risked setting the conflict "ablaze" and urged both sides to return to the negotiating table quickly.

US-led efforts to broker peace for a two-state solution collapsed in April 2014 and leaders on both sides have since been weakened politically. But with the region's crises worsening and Washington reassessing its options on US-Israel relations, France sees a narrow window to resume negotiations.

"We have to do the maximum so that the two sides restart negotiations," Fabius told reporters after meeting Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi. "We think that by doing nothing there will the twin risk of stalemate and setting [the conflict] ablaze."

Fabius is on a two-day trip to the Middle East where he hopes to promote a French-led initiative that would see the peace process relaunched through an international support group comprising Arab states, the European Union and UN Security Council members.

These states would then work to pressure both sides to make compromises neither side wants to make alone.

Talks would be rubber-stamped by a UN Security Council resolution setting the negotiating parameters and establishing a time period, possibly 18 months, to complete talks.

“It’s been 40 years... we need to adapt the method so that the Arabs, the Europeans, the Americans can accompany things,” Fabius said.

“What is important is to get these talks restarted. Israel’s security has to be assured but also the rights of the Palestinians have to be recognised and in that regard when settlements move ahead, that pushes back a two-state solution.”

Speaking at the same news conference, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri said he supported efforts to revive the talks given the regional geopolitical situation.

“In this context, we are worried about the peace process situation,” he said.

Fabius will hear more views from the region later on Saturday when he will hold talks with key Arab League ministers, including Saudi Arabia, in Cairo. He will meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in occupied Jerusalem on Sunday.

The trip comes before a final round of nuclear talks between major powers and Iran in late June. Washington has said it will not discuss the Middle East process until the Iran situation is clear, but has indicated it may be receptive to a new UN resolution.

Israeli officials have called the French initiative counterproductive saying that only direct dialogue between the two sides could resolve the conflict. 

BERLIN — A leading Al Jazeera journalist was arrested at a Berlin airport on Saturday at the request of Egypt, a lawyer for the Qatar-based satellite network said, a move he described as part of a crackdown by Cairo on the channel.

International lawyer Saad Djebbar told Reuters Ahmed Mansour, one of the most senior journalists on the channel's Arabic service, had been abruptly and unexpectedly arrested in Germany.

A spokesman for the German Federal Police confirmed that a 52-year-old man was arrested at Berlin's Tegel Airport at 1320 GMT following an international arrest warrant from the Egyptian authorities.

The spokesman said the general public prosecutor was now checking the man's identity, as well as a possible extradition to Egypt.

Cairo's criminal court sentenced Mansour, who has dual Egyptian and British citizenship, to 15 years in prison in absentia last year on the charge of torturing a lawyer in Tahrir Square in 2011.

Al Jazeera said at the time the charge was false and an attempt to silence Mansour.

"This is a very serious development," said Djebbar. "We knew that the Egyptians were going to set such a trap to harass our journalists and that is what has happened."

Mansour was arrested as he tried to board a Qatar Airways flight from Berlin to Doha, Djebbar said.

Egyptian authorities accuse Al Jazeera of being a mouthpiece of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Qatar-backed movement which President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi toppled in 2013 when he was Egypt's army chief.

TUNIS — Ten members of Tunisia's diplomatic staff kidnapped in Libya a week ago have been freed and returned to Tunis on Friday, and the Tunisian government has shut down its consular operations in Tripoli.

No group has claimed responsibility for the abduction. Armed groups in Libya have repeatedly kidnapped diplomats and foreign nationals to pressure their governments to free Libyan militants held in jails overseas.

Libya's two rival governments — one internationally recognised in the east and the other self-declared in Tripoli — are fighting for control, four years after the fall of strongman Muammar Qadhafi.

Tunisia had been one of the few countries to keep a diplomatic presence in Tripoli. Most Western governments and companies pulled out last summer when the armed faction called Libya Dawn took over the capital and set up its own government.

Three of the 10 Tunisians had been freed earlier in the week after talks between the captors and the Tripoli government. Seven more freed hostages arrived in Tunis on Friday, to be greeted by government officials and family.

"All 23 staff from the consulate have now returned and we have decided to close the consulate in Tripoli because they cannot guarantee our security. These armed militias are not under state control," Foreign Minister Taieb Bakouch told reporters.

"Our advice to all Tunisians is leave Libya and return immediately. We cannot again be subject to any blackmail."

He gave no details about negotiations to free the staff, who were kidnapped from the consulate. Their release came after a Tunisian court ruled on Thursday that Libyan Walid Kalib could be extradited.

Kalib is a member of the Libya Dawn, a loose coalition of former anti-Qadhafi rebels and Islamist-leaning fighters, who was arrested in Tunisia last month. Gunmen had stormed the consulate in Tripoli and kidnapped the Tunisians after the Tunisian court, in a previous ruling, refused to release him.

Both governments are allied with two loose coalitions of armed groups, former rebel brigades and fighters, both claiming the mantle of the country's true army. But those factions are themselves fractured and their loyalties more often to regional, tribal or local commanders.

In the security vacuum, Islamist militants allied to the Daesh and other hard-line groups have also gained a foothold in Libya to train, seek refuge and attack neighbouring countries.

United Nations negotiators are trying to broker a peace agreement between the two factions and form a unity government. Western powers fear their standoff is creating a failed state just across the Mediterranean sea from mainland Europe. 

NEAR DOLEV SETTLEMENT, Palestinian Territories — A Palestinian opened fire on two Israeli men near a West Bank settlement on Friday, killing one and wounding the other, authorities said, in what appeared to be a lone-wolf attack.

Israeli army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said a "Palestinian approached a vehicle that was in the area and asked them to stop... and shot the two from close range”.

A spokeswoman at Sheba Hospital near Tel Aviv confirmed that one of the men had died and the other was lightly wounded. 

The attacker fled, prompting a manhunt.

Local media named the dead man as Danny Gonen, a 25-year-old from the central Israeli city of Lod. Lerner said that Gonen and his friend, also from Lod, had been hiking in the area.

The incident occurred near the Dolev settlement, according to Israel's emergency medical service Magen David Adom, which said the victims were in their 20s.

The army said the two men were in a car at the time of the shooting, which took place northwest of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Twitter that "the evidence on the ground indicates this was a terror attack, and we're working to find the perpetrator”.

"We can't let the relative quiet achieved thanks to many successfully prevented attacks mislead us," he said.

"The attempts to hurt us continue all the time, and we'll continue to fight them with all the means we have."

President Reuven Rivlin condemned the attack, which he described as "another step in the quiet and serious escalation in acts of terrorism we have witnessed in recent months”.

Rivlin also called for Palestinian as well as Arab Israeli leaders to issue a "clear and decisive condemnation" of the attack.

The UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, condemned the shooting and called on "all sides to exercise the utmost restraint, to maintain calm and promptly bring the perpetrators to justice”.

West Bank settlements are considered illegal under international law, and Israelis have been attacked previously in and around them as well as in annexed east Jerusalem.

A string of so-called lone-wolf attacks by Palestinians, which have occasionally involved shootings, began in Jerusalem in October but have spread to the West Bank.

On May 20, two Israeli female security personnel were injured in East Jerusalem when they were hit by a car driven by a Palestinian who was then shot dead.

Also last month, three Israeli settlers were hurt by a Palestinian who hit them with his car near the Alon Shvut settlement in the West Bank. The Shin Bet domestic security service said the perpetrator had confessed to carrying out the attack for "nationalistic reasons”.

In April, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian who stabbed an officer in the southern West Bank city Hebron.

Israeli seized the West Bank in the 1967 War.

Today around 580,000 Jewish settlers live in the territory, including Israeli-occupied Arab East Jerusalem.

TEHRAN (AFP) — One of Iran's female vice presidents launched a furious attack Saturday on "sanctimonious" groups whose threats of violent confrontation at a volleyball match ultimately triggered a clampdown on women spectators.

The remarks from Shahindokht Molaverdi, who had to backtrack on plans to ease restrictions on women at male sporting events, could inflame the government's row with religious hardliners who oppose such reform. 

Volleyball has become hugely popular in Iran as the national team has risen up the sport's rankings and women were allowed to watch it until a ban was imposed in recent years.

The issue of female attendance peaked Friday, before the first of two matches in Tehran against the United States in the sport's World League.

The debate continued afterwards, somewhat clouding the home team's easy 3-0 victory over its longtime political foe, but with whom a nuclear deal due by the end of this month could begin to repair relations.

Molaverdi, responsible for women and family affairs in the Islamic republic, last week said some female supporters would be allowed to watch the match. But security officials later contradicted her and said no attendance policies had been changed.

Following two small protests in the past week arguing against female admission, women's rights activists used social media to voice frustration, posting on Twitter under the hashtag #letwomengotostadium.

Streets surrounding the Azadi Sports Complex were heavily policed on Friday, with officers forbidding women from going nearer the venue.

And although 200 special tickets for women were printed, an Iranian volleyball official told AFP the accreditations were not authenticated by security forces at the arena, and were thus invalid.

A few women pictured on social media watching the match were not Iranian, the Fars news agency reported Saturday, but from the Russian, Italian and Hungarian embassies in Tehran.

In the aftermath, Molaverdi hit out at the curbs, writing on Facebook that the government had respected the views of religious leaders while trying to respond to "the legal demands of another section of society".

Opponents spread 'seed of despair' 

She then cited unnamed groups, accusing them of "sparing no effort to spread the seed of despair”.

Such opposition came "from those who were denounced two years ago by voters, and who had crawled into their cave of oblivion for eight years".

The comments, confirmed by Molaverdi's office as genuine, suggested she was drawing a contrast between the plans of President Hassan Rouhani, regarded as a moderate, and the hardline two-term tenure of his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Recent days have seen female volleyball fans branded "prostitutes" and "sluts" on social media and on posters allegedly distributed in downtown Tehran.

Molaverdi said publication of such notices by "those who call themselves followers of God... and which used words that one loathes to repeat, clearly constitute several offences under the law”.

A "crowd of sanctimonious people who published one notice after another denouncing the modest and decent girls and women of this land" who "talked of confrontation used obscene and disgusting insults that only befit themselves", Molaverdi wrote on Facebook.

"Even if one day our beloved girls and women forgive this crowd, they will never forget them and keep these days in their historical memory."

Unlike football, women were allowed to attend male volleyball and basketball matches until a few years ago, and there is no need to change the law, Molaverdi added.

Earlier this month, Ansar Hizbollah, a radical Islamist group in Iran, said the government should reconsider its plans or face protests.

And in a sign of the tension, Ahmad Salek Kashani, the head of parliament's cultural commission, told Ansar Hizbollah's weekly magazine: "Women who are allowed to enter the stadiums, what are they going to watch? Is it anything other than men's bodies that have been left bare because of sports clothes?"

A second match against the United States will take place on Sunday.

BAGHDAD — Iraq's defence ministry and the US military dismissed a claim by the Daesh terror group on Thursday that it had shot down an Iraqi fighter plane.

"The publication of these false stories is part of an unjust psychological war waged by some media outlets supporting terrorism aimed at playing down the heroics of the Iraqi army," the ministry said on its website.

Daesh said on one of its Twitter accounts it had shot down the fighter north of the Anbar provincial capital Ramadi, which the group seized last month.

A member of an anti-Daesh Sunni force called Sahwa (Awakening) said an Iraqi jet, a Russian-made Su-25, was seen crashing in flames after being shot down north of Ramadi.

The US military dismissed the Daesh claim, saying all US-led coalition aircraft as well as Iraqi aircraft had been accounted for.

Iraq's government relies on a US-led coalition and Iranian-backed Shiite militias in its fight against Daesh, which is occupying a third of the country as well as parts of neighbouring Syria.

Daesh militants seized Ramadi last month and the city is a focal point of coalition efforts to slow the group's advances in Iraq.

On Thursday, Daesh insurgents fired mortars at a barracks in the town of Amiriyat Al Falluja, also in Anbar, killing a soldier and a policeman, police sources said.

Insurgents also attacked the village of Al Mazra'a with mortars, killing five members of the Iraqi security forces. 

GENEVA — Fisticuffs broke out Thursday at a Geneva press conference by Yemeni rebels when their leader was attacked by a slipper-wielding woman and others accusing them of mass killings in the country's south.

The incident underscored the deep divisions between the various sides involved in trying to get Iran-backed rebels and the exiled government to agree to a badly needed humanitarian truce.

Hamza Al Houthi, the head of the rebel delegation and from the Ansarullah group, was addressing reporters when a woman in a headscarf barged in and threw a slipper at him — a huge insult in the Arab world.

Houthi promptly threw it back.

She was quickly joined by six men who shouted slogans against the rebels and started raining blows at them, screaming "Killers, you are spreading death and disease in South Yemen".

The melee lasted several minutes with bottles hurled before the intruders were hauled out.

The woman’s gesture was immediately hailed on social media in Aden, the main port city in South Yemen, with congratulatory tweets.

Once order was restored, Houthi said the rebels wanted “a humanitarian truce but it is not wanted by Saudi Arabia and its allies” who have staged aerial bombings on the rebels since March 26.

‘War benefits Al Qaeda’ 

He said the stalled UN talks in Geneva would continue until at least Friday, adding: “We hope these preliminary talks will end up in some kind of accord ... a transition that will hopefully lead to free, fair and transparent elections.”

He accused the Saudis of using “nitrogen bombs and other horrible arms” to “massacre women and children” and said Al Qaeda in Yemen was “exploiting the situation and using the aggression to extend its influence over the region”.

Yaser Al Awadi, another member of the rebel delegation said the “Yemen war has become an economic investment for Britain, France and the United States”.

“Their arms factories are working full-time for two months to furnish and supply arms,” he said.

“Our women and children are being used as guinea pigs to test new arms,” Awadi said at the chaotic press conference, the most dramatic event at the peace talks so far. 

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon launched the high-stakes negotiations on Monday with an appeal for a badly needed two-week humanitarian truce.

The negotiations, in their fourth day, have been bogged down by the government’s insistence that the Iran-backed rebels must withdraw from the vast territory they control, including the capital Sanaa.

It has also protested the size of the rebel delegation which is more than double the pre-agreed number of 10.

Houthi rebels and their allies, troops faithful to ousted president Ali Abdallah Saleh, favour a truce but are refusing to withdraw as demanded by the government in exile, which is backed by Saudi Arabia.