Almotamar.net, Saba - Yemen has said that the al-Houthi rebel group had committed terrible crimes against innocent citizens in the northwestern province of Saada, where fierce fighting is being broken out between the rebels and the government forces.

The government accused the rebel group of killing and torturing hundreds of citizens and kidnapping tens others as well as attacking the homes of citizens, schools, mosques and projects in the province, some 230 kilometres north-west of the capital Sana'a.

The military-run 26September weekly reported on Thursday some horrific crimes committed by the elements of the insurgency and terrorism in Saada, including the murder of people in many of the province's districts and the destruction, bombing and arson of more than 102 homes.

For the kidnappings, the subversive elements have kidnapped more than 182 citizens who being abused and tortured. In a case, three terrorist rebels have abducted and raped a girl in Haydan district of Saada.

The report also pointed to that those elements had taken over many schools in some districts of the province, ravaging documents, records and books of school pupils and abducting teachers and a number of students.

The rebels also targeted and destructed service projects in several areas of Saada, including water projects, farms and locomotives as well as foraging cars of engineers in charge of the inventory of the damages caused by five waves of the fighting.

In addition, they blew up explosive devices and mines which claimed the lives of many people and set up illegally more than 23 checkpoints, forcing many citizens to leave their homes.

In order to expand the area of their terrorist acts, the al-Houthi rebels killed in July seven people and wounded seven others in al-Zaheer district of the neighboring province of Jawf in addition to taking over 30 mosques in the districts of al-Zaheer, Marashy, al-Anan, al-Matoun and al-Matma of Jawf province.

The government has outlined stringent terms for ending the new wave of its offensive against the rebels in Saada. The government has ordered the rebels to evacuate all occupied government offices, hand in weapons and ammunition, and free captured soldiers and citizens.

It also demanded information as to the whereabouts of a German family of five and a British engineer kidnapped in June in Saada.

The government was provoked into sending more troops to the north after the rebels blocked traffic along the strategic highway linking Sana�a to the Saudi border, a crucial lifeline for the Yemeni economy.

The government has been engaged in an on-off war with rebels for the best part of five years. The new offensive is significant escalation in the government�s war against the rebels, with the state�s iron-fist approach.

The al-Houthi group has killed more than 330 people, including 28 women and 10 children, and injured about 200 other last year in Saada. The al-Houthi followers' crimes have been bloodily raised in the province.

Since the fighting erupted in 2004, thousands of people, soldiers and insurgents have been killed in Saada, which lies close to border with Saudi Arabia, after the rebel group was founded by rebel leader Hussein al-Houthi.

Hussein, the eldest brother of the current group leader Abdul-Malik, was killed by the army in September 2004.

The Yemeni government accuses the al-Houthi group of trying to reinstall the rule of imams, which was toppled by a republican revolution in northern Yemen in 1962.

North Yemen gained its independent from the Ottoman Empire in 1918 and in 1967; the British withdrew from what would become South Yemen.

In 1990, the two countries formally unified as the Republic of Yemen.