ANSD : Yemen hit by new bout of heavy fighting

FRI 19 - 4 - 2024

Date: May 28, 2018
Source: The Daily Star

Yemen hit by new bout of heavy fighting

SANAA: Heavy fighting in Yemen between pro-government forces and Houthi rebels has killed over 150 people in the last four days, Yemeni officials and witnesses said Sunday. Government forces have been trying to seize rebel-held areas along the western coast, while an allied Arab-led coalition has been targeting the rebels with airstrikes in the northwestern Saada province, a rebel stronghold.

The offensive is being waged by ground troops carrying sophisticated weapons, including shoulder-fired missiles, with air cover from the coalition, the officials said.

Security officials say a coalition airstrike near a gas station in the capital, Sanaa, killed four civilians Saturday and wounded 10. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media, while the witnesses did so for fear of reprisals.

Meanwhile, Riyadh reported that two soldiers from its national guard had been killed in fighting against the Houthis along the kingdom’s southern border with Yemen.

The official SPA news agency did not provide details on when or how they died.

The report came as coalition spokesman Col. Turki al-Maliki said Saudi air defenses had intercepted and destroyed a Houthi drone that targeted the international airport of the southern city of Abha.

An examination of the debris showed the drone was manufactured by Iran and used by the Houthi rebels, Maliki said in a statement late Saturday cited by the SPA.

In March, an international rights group said fighting along Yemen’s west coast has displaced 100,000 people in recent months, mostly from the Red Sea port city of Hudaida. Amnesty International warned that the “the worst could be yet to come.”

The port is a vital lifeline from which most of the Yemeni population’s food and medicine comes. The coalition accuses the Houthis of using Hudaida and other ports to receive weapons and ammunition from Iran, which denies arming the rebels.

Yemen has been embroiled in a civil war pitting the coalition against the Iran-backed Houthis since March 2015.

The coalition aims to restore the government of self-exiled President Abed Rabbou Mansour Hadi.

The three-year stalemated war has killed more than 10,000 people and displaced more than 3 million.

It has also damaged Yemen’s infrastructure, crippled its health system and pushed it to the brink of famine.

The U.N. considers Yemen to be the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 22.2 million people in need of assistance.

Malnutrition, cholera and other diseases have killed or sickened thousands of civilians over the years.

Mark Lowcock, the United Nations’ humanitarian affairs chief, said Thursday that “some 8.4 million people are severely food insecure and at risk of starvation” in the war-torn country.

“If conditions do not improve, a further 10 million people will fall into this category by the end of the year,” he warned.

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