DUBAI: Aircraft from a Saudi-led coalition Sunday bombed Yemen’s Houthi outposts across the country, residents said, while Yemen’s government in exile said the militia was in talks with the U.S. in Oman.

The raids hit an air base near Sanaa airport and a military installation aligned with the Houthis overlooking the presidential palace compound in the capital Sanaa.

The Saudi-led coalition began airstrikes in Yemen in March in a campaign to restore Yemeni President Abed Rabbou Mansour Hadi to power. He fled in March after Iranian-backed Houthis seized Sanaa in September and then thrust into central and south Yemen.

Nearly 2,000 people have been killed and over 8,000 wounded in the conflict since March 19, according to the United Nations.

The Houthis’ TV channel Al-Masira said the coalition had launched 25 airstrikes on the main Houthi provinces of Saada and Hajja along the kingdom’s border, adding that Saudi ground forces were also shelling the areas.

Residents in Saada confirmed to Reuters by phone that Houthi positions were heavily bombed by warplanes, but there was no immediate confirmation by Saudi authorities.

In the central city of Taiz, also a main battleground between armed Hadi loyalists and Houthi militiamen, residents reported Arab airstrikes on Houthi forces gathered in a historic mountaintop fortress and a nearby special forces base.

Yemen’s exiled government in Saudi Arabia Sunday told Reuters that senior Houthi officials are holding talks with the United States in neighboring Oman to help end the nine-week conflict, in a sign that diplomacy may be advancing.

“We have been informed there are meetings, at American request, and that a private American plane carried the Houthis to Muscat,” Rajeh Badi, a spokesman for the Hadi government told Reuters by telephone from the Saudi capital Riyadh.

The Yemeni government was not party to the talks, Badi said.

If confirmed, the Oman meeting would be the first between the U.S. and Houthis, Saudi Arabia’s main foreign ally, since the start of the war.

The U.S. has said it was providing arms and intelligence to Saudi Arabia during its campaign in Yemen and has historically been its most powerful ally. “We hope that these talks are being held in the context of international efforts to implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 2216,” Badi said.

The resolution, adopted in April, recognized Hadi as Yemen’s legitimate authority and called on the Houthis to quit the main cities.

Heavy artillery clashes along Yemen’s border with the kingdom have increased as the war enters its ninth week.

Houthi TV reported that the rebels fired 20 rockets at Saudi Arabia’s southwestern border city of Najran Saturday, and broadcast a video it said showed Houthi forces shelling a Saudi border post.

A Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman said a border guard was killed and seven others were wounded Saturday in the Najran region by rocket attacks from inside Yemen.

Human Rights Watch said in a report Sunday that three bombings it had investigated in the northern province of Saada used cluster bombs, which are banned by most countries, adding that it suspected the munitions were fired by Saudi-led forces.