The leader of Shiite rebels embroiled in a war with the Yemeni army accused the government on Sunday of discriminating against his group, the Zaidis, vowing to continue the fight against the state.
"(The war) is part of the official discrimination, marginalisation and separation practised against us as a social group described by the authorities as a minority," Abdul-Malek al-Huthi said in remarks published on a website that carries the rebels’ news.
"As long as we are being attacked, our choice would be to defend ourselves."
"The war, the destruction and the arrests … are being waged against our culture," he said, adding that the government detains Zaidis "on ethnic and sectarian grounds".
He said his 90-year-old father Badr Eddine, a religious figure among the Zaidi community, is on a list of 55 wanted rebels.
Hundreds have died in the latest clashes, which began when the army launched its "Scorched Earth" operation on August 11.
Dozens more were killed or wounded on Sunday as fighting raged in the Omran and Saada provinces of northern Yemen, military sources said.
The United Nations estimates that the fighting has caused tens of thousands of civilians to flee their homes around the rebels’ stronghold in Saada.
An offshoot of Shiite Islam, the Zaidis are a minority in the mainly Sunni Yemen but form the majority of the population in the rugged mountainous north, where they first launched a rebellion against the government in 2004.
The authorities accuse the rebels of seeking to reinstate the imamate, a form of clerical rule that ended in a republication revolution in 1962, and of being backed by Shiite Iran.
But the rebels deny both claims, charging that they are fighting to defend their community against what they say is government aggression and marginalisation.