Saudi-led forces battle Yemeni rebels

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Troops in the Saudi-led coalition captured a town south of Yemen’s port city of Hodeidah on Thursday as fierce fighting and airstrikes pounded the area, officials said, on the second day of an offensive to capture the strategic harbor.

Soldiers took the town of Nakhila in the al-Durayhimi district, about 20 kilometers south of Hodeidah International Airport, according to the government-run SABA news agency.

Fighters continued to move closer to the airport in fighting Thursday.

The Saudi-led coalition backing Yemen’s exiled government launched an assault on the port city of Hodeidah on Wednesday. The Red Sea port is the main entry for food into a country already on the brink of famine.

The biggest offensive of the yearslong war in the Arab world’s poorest nation has raised warnings from aid agencies that Yemen’s humanitarian disaster could deepen.

The attack is aimed at driving out the Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who have held Hodeidah since 2015, and break the civil war’s long stalemate.

But it could set off a prolonged street-by-street battle that inflicts heavy casualties.

The fear is that a protracted fight could force a shutdown of Hodeidah’s port at a time when a halt in aid risks tipping millions into starvation. Some 70 percent of Yemen’s food enters via the port, as well as the bulk of humanitarian aid and fuel supplies. Around two-thirds of the country’s population of 27 million relies on aid and 8.4 million are already at risk of starving.

The United Nations and other aid groups already had pulled their international staff from Hodeidah ahead of the assault. The UN Security Council was scheduled to meet on Thursday to discuss the offensive.