War-Torn Yemen Also Suffers Acute Darkness

Yemeni provinces were in darkness on Sunday for the seventh day in a row.



The darkness has put the residents of these provinces in total isolation.



The Shiite Houthi group, which controls the Ministry of Electricity, says electricity outages are caused by the destruction of cables delivering electricity from capital Sanaa to the eastern province of Maarib.



It adds that the cables were destroyed by warplanes participating in a Saudi-led campaign against the Houthis last week.



Independent sources, meanwhile, said the outages were caused by the destruction of electricity cables during clashes between Houthi militants and tribesmen in Maarib on Monday.



Nevertheless, technical teams from the Ministry of Electricity failed to enter the fighting site.



A ministry source said fighting parties agreed on Saturday to a 24-hour truce, which would give ministry technical teams the chance to enter the area and repair damaged cables.



The source expected electricity to return on Monday.



Worse still, there has been no internet service across Yemen over the past few days.



In a desperate bid to end their disconnect with the outside world, most Yemenis returned to use their old battery-powered radios in order to know the news.



Mohamed al-Sabri, a civil servant, said he and other family members were glued to their television screen to know the news before the Saudi-led campaign started on March 26.



"Then, we stopped to know anything happening in our country," al-Sabri told The Anadolu Agency.



He said battery-powered radios became the only medium for the news for him and his family.



Mobile phones have turned into dead and useless gadgets in the absence of electricity too.



Internet cafés across Yemen also closed down because of the outages, while the administration of the country's hotels told their residents that they would be able to make electricity available for them in their rooms four hours every day only.



Late last month, Saudi Arabia and several other Arab states began an air campaign against Houthi positions across Yemen.



Riyadh says the strikes come in response to appeals by embattled President ABD Rabbuh Mansour Hadi for help against the Shiite militants.



Yemen has been in turmoil since the Houthis overran capital Sanaa in September and have since advanced on other provinces.



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