ADEN: President Abed Rabbou Mansour Hadi Sunday urged Houthi rebels to lay down their arms and resume dialogue to end Yemen’s conflict, as he left for the U.N. General Assembly. The embattled leader, who returned Wednesday to the southern city of Aden after a nearly six-month exile, headed to New York where he is to address the General Assembly.

“I am open to all efforts seeking a political solution,” Hadi said in a letter addressed to King Salman of Saudi Arabia, where the Yemeni leader took shelter in March after rebels advanced on Aden, his last refuge at the time after having escaped house arrest in Houthi-controlled Sanaa.

Hadi also called on rebels “to end their coup, surrender weapons ... and return to the dialogue table, to implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 2216,” which demands the insurgents withdraw from territories they have occupied.

The rebels overran Sanaa unopposed in September last year and went on to expand their control zone into several regions, aided in fierce fighting against pro-Hadi forces by renegade troops loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

In July, loyalist forces backed by a Saudi-led Arab coalition evicted the rebels from Aden and four other southern provinces, and they have since set their sights on advancing on Sanaa.

In a letter to Hadi, King Salman congratulated Hadi on his return to Aden and pledged support to the internationally recognized president. “We in the coalition stand firmly, with all our strength, by your side ... to protect your country,” Salman wrote.

Meanwhile, residents and medics said airstrikes by helicopters from a Saudi-led alliance killed 25 civilians in the village of Bani Zela, in Yemen’s Red Sea border area with Saudi Arabia, adding that most of the victims were women and children.

“People were fleeing their homes as the helicopters pursued. They committed a massacre for no reason,” a resident who called himself Khaled told Reuters by phone.

A Saudi official denied the attack and said the news was “totally false.”

The incident in Bani Zela, comes a day after the kingdom announced three of its officers, including a general, had been killed along the frontier.

The campaign has resulted in several mass killings of civilians, including 36 people at a water bottling plant in August and 25 workers at a milk factory in April.

The attack on Bani Zela may signal an escalation in combat along the border. The target of the strikes was unclear and a spokesman for the alliance could not be immediately reached for comment.

A Saudi brigadier general died in hospital of wounds suffered in an incident on the border with Yemen, the Saudi armed forces said Saturday.

Ibrahim Omar Ibrahim Hamzi, deputy commander of the 8th Brigade in Saudi Arabia’s southern Jizan province, was injured “defending the nation and its citizens,” the statement said, without providing any details.

His death follows the killing of two border officers along the frontier on Saturday.

About 100 Saudi military personnel, including another general, have been killed along the border with Yemen since the Saudi-led campaign began in March, according to a Reuters count.

More than 4,500 Yemenis have also died since March, according to U.N. figures.

In the latest fighting, coalition airstrikes pounded suspected Houthi targets in the capital around 25 times, residents said, and hit several other central provinces.

Gulf troops and allied Yemeni tribesmen were fighting ground battles against militiamen and their allies in Yemen’s army in the desert province of Marib 120 km east of Sanaa on Sunday.

The two sides exchanged artillery fire in a coalition push for the strategic foothills leading to Sanaa on Saturday, backed by Arab air strikes.

At least 20 bodies from both sides were seen on the battlefield, a local official told Reuters.