Nineteen Shiite rebels were killed in clashes with Yemeni soldiers in Saada province for control of a military camp on Sunday, raising the death toll to more than 50, a local official said.
   
The head of a Zaidi Shiite revolt, meanwhile, blamed the army for the renewed bloodshed in northwestern Yemen since Friday.
   
Six soldiers were wounded in the fighting in the Haydan district village of Dafaa for control of the camp, said the local official, who declined to be named.
   
The clashes were sparked by an army offensive to recapture Dafaa military camp which has been in rebel hands for the past three months, the source said, adding that soldiers had entered the camp.
   
In an interview with a French radio station, rebel leader Abdul Malak al-Huthi said the army was to blame for the bloodshed.
   
"The renewed tension is due to the repeated aggressions of the army ... which is using tanks and other weapons ... in unjustified operations" in the mountainous province of Saada, Huthi told RMC Middle East.
   
"This will lead to the worst," he warned in the interview, a text of which was obtained by AFP, accusing army officers of blocking Qatari mediation efforts between the Sanaa government and the Zaidi rebels.
   
"Military chiefs refuse to bring an end to the war because it serves their interests," he charged, while at the same time denying any links between the revolt and Shiite Iran.
   
Ten people were killed in clashes between the army and rebels of Yemen's Shiite minority on Saturday in the north of the country, tribal sources said.
   
The clashes broke out at Munbah in Saada, the sources said. One soldier was killed, along with three rebel fighters and six tribesmen who have been supporting the army.
   
On Friday night, after a blast in Saada which claimed 18 lives, three policemen were killed in an attack on a Munbah checkpoint manned by special security forces.
   
Two of the attackers also died and four more escaped, the sources told AFP requesting anonymity.
   
Eighteen people, mostly soldiers, were killed in Yemen on Friday when a blast blamed by authorities on the insurgents exploded at the entrance to a mosque in the rebels' stronghold. The rebels have denied responsibility.
   
The renewed violence deals another blow to continuing Qatari mediation to implement a peace deal that was brokered in Doha in June 2007.
   
The rebels are fighting to restore a Zaidi Shiite imamate, which was overthrown in a 1962 republican coup in Yemen, one of the world's poorest countries.
   
The insurgents are known as Huthis after their late commander, Hussein Badr Eddin al-Huthi, who was killed by the army in September 2004. Hussein was succeeded as field commander by Abdul Malak, his brother.
   
The rebels reject President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime as illegitimate, even though Saleh himself is a Zaidi.