Coalition battles for key Yemen airport
KHOKHA, Yemen, June 19, (Agencies): UAE-backed Yemeni government forces fought their way into Hodeida airport on Tuesday, pressing an offensive that has seen some of the most intense fighting of a three-year war against Shiite Houthi rebels.
The United Arab Emirates, which has US-trained troops fighting alongside the Yemeni army, said the alliance had entered the airport in Hodeida — a Red Sea port city that is a key aid hub and the entry point for three-quarters of Yemen’s imports.
“With the participation and support of the Emirati armed forces, the joint Yemeni resistance (army) entered Hodeida airport,” the UAE state news agency WAM tweeted.
A Yemeni military source confirmed to AFP that troops had entered the rebel base at the disused airport on the southern edge of the city.
Military sources also reported 33 Houthis and 19 soldiers killed in Tuesday’s battle, bringing the death toll in Hodeida this week to 216 fighters. No civilian casualties have yet been confirmed.
The battle for Hodeida has sparked fears of a new escalation of the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, which is already teetering on the brink of famine.
The United Nations has warned any attack on Hodeida port could cripple shipments of desperately needed aid to the 8.4 million Yemenis facing imminent starvation.
Hodeida’s residents are now bracing for what they fear will be devastating street fighting, as tanks and buses carrying uniformed troops roll through the empty streets of the once-bustling city.
One resident, who asked not to be identified for fear of arrest, said civilians had been “banned from using their phones to take pictures and are questioned about their movements if they’re seen in the streets”. The rebels have also begun to dig trenches in the streets, he said. Fierce fighting in the Hodeida area has already driven 5,200
families from their homes as pro-government forces advanced up the Red Sea coast, according to the UN.
The coalition launched a major offensive on June 13, dubbed Operation Golden Victory, to drive the rebels out of Hodeida, now the most intense battlefront in an already brutal war.
Since Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their regional allies intervened in Yemen in 2015, there have been multiple rounds of UN-brokered peace talks, but they have all failed to achieve any breakthrough.
UN envoy Martin Griffiths has been holding talks in the rebel-held capital Sanaa since Saturday to seek concessions from Houthi leaders that might avoid all-out fighting in the streets of Hodeida. Griffiths appears to have failed to make a breakthrough.
Griffiths told the UN Security Council by video-conference on Monday that he was hopeful a first round of preliminary talks could take place next month, according to two diplomats present at the closed-door session.
But the UN envoy flew out of Sanaa on Tuesday without making any comment to journalists.
The Yemeni government and its allies have insisted that the Houthis must fully withdraw from the city and turn over the port to UN supervision.
The rebels have so far agreed only to share control of the port with the United Nations.
The Gulf Arab states accuse their regional arch rival Iran of smuggling arms to the rebels through the port, a charge Tehran denies.
The coalition held a press conference in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday to display what it said were explosives used by the Houthis in Yemen, including landmines and improvised explosive devices described by one UAE official as “a fraction of what the coalition has seized”.
The Yemen conflict has killed nearly 10,000 people, most of them civilians, since 2015.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their allies joined the Yemen war that year, after President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi fled into exile as the rebels overran much of the country.
The coalition has helped pro-government forces to regain control of the south and much of the Red Sea coast but the rebels still control Sanaa and most of the north.
Officials in a Saudi-led coalition now battling Shiite rebels for control of a crucial port in Yemen on Tuesday displayed weapons captured on the battlefield that they say show Iran is arming the insurgents.
Iran long has denied arming the rebels, known as Houthis, despite reports by the United Nations, Western countries and outside groups linking it to the rebels’ arsenal.
Weapons shown to reporters in Abu Dhabi and later at an Emirati military base on a government-sponsored tour included drones, a sniper rifle, roadside bombs disguised as rocks and even a “drone boat,” which had been filled with explosives that failed to detonate.
The officials showed Iranian-labeled components inside of equipment that they said was used to produce and load fuel for the rockets the rebels have fired across the border at Saudi Arabia. They also displayed images allegedly showing Iranian officials building components for the “drone boat.” The officials said such weapons threaten both coalition forces and civilians.
“Unsurprisingly, there are advanced military components in the Houthi militia’s hands,” Talal al-Teneiji, an Emirati Foreign Affairs Ministry official, told The Associated Press. “We took time to inspect and disassemble these to figure out the source ... and we can say that these elements are militarygrade materials imported from Iran to the Houthi militias.”
Iran’s mission to the United Nations
did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
The rare show-and-tell by the Saudiled coalition comes as the United Arab Emirates leads Yemeni forces in an offensive seeking to capture the Red Sea port city of Hodeida.
Their campaign has been criticized by international aid groups, which fear a protracted fight could force a shutdown of the port and potentially tip 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 twothirds of the country’s population of 27 million relies on aid and 8.4 million are already at risk of starving.
The Houthi-controlled port has remained open, as the main battle Tuesday was around the city’s airport, to the south.
Some of the weapons shown have previously been described by U.N. weapons experts and an independent group called Conflict Armament Research, which gained access to the materiel through the UAE’s elite Presidential Guard. Among them were roadside bombs disguised as rocks that the research group has said bear similarities to others used by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and by other Iranbacked fighters in Iraq and Bahrain, suggesting at the least an Iranian influence in their manufacture.
Already, the Saudi-led coalition has disarmed between 20,000 to 30,000 land mines and bombs, most laid indiscriminately by the Houthis, al-Teneiji said.
Other weapons on display Tuesday included a .50-caliber sniper rifle and mines. Officials also displayed a series of drones they said showed a growing sophistication by the insurgents, starting first with styrofoam models that could be built by hobby kit to one captured in April that closely resembled an Iranian-made drone.
Those advanced drones have been flown into the radar arrays of Saudi Arabia’s Patriot missile batteries, according to Conflict Armament Research, disabling them and allowing the Houthis to fire ballistic missiles into the kingdom unchallenged. Iran has been accused by the U.S. and the U.N. of supplying ballistic missile technology to the Houthis, something Tehran denies.
At a military base, the officials showed what they described as “dual-use” equipment that they believe was used to fuel Badr rockets, gear which they seized from smugglers in Yemen’s central Marib governorate. Inside one piece of equipment a component bore the name of Shokouh Electric, an Iranian firm. Another piece of the equipment bore the Farsi name and address of Mashal Kaveh, another
Iranian company.
The Saudi-led coalition officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. The AP could not immediately reach the Iranian companies for comment, but Iran has mocked previous show-and-tell events by Saudi and American officials.
The officials also shared black-andwhite images they said came from the “drone boat” that failed to explode. They said the pictures and associated data from the boat’s computer showed Iranians building components for the boat’s guidance system in eastern Tehran, with a hat in the background of one picture bearing the symbol of Iran’s hard-line paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
They said those involved in building the boat’s components likely believed it would be destroyed in the blast, so they didn’t wipe down the computer’s hard drive. But perhaps more telling in Yemen’s long, complicated war was the fact that the boat itself actually came from the UAE, which had originally given it to Yemeni government forces.
Meanwhile, the UN envoy for Yemen hopes to relaunch talks on a peace plan next month despite an offensive on the key port city of Hodeida that threatens to escalate the war and trigger a humanitarian disaster, diplomats said Monday.
Speaking by videoconference from Sanaa, Martin Griffiths briefed the Security Council behind closed doors on his framework for peace talks even as the Saudi-led coalition pressed on with an assault on the city.
A first round of preliminary talks could take place next month to restart negotiations on a political transition, Griffiths told the council, according to two diplomats in the chamber.
Following the meeting, Russian Deputy Ambassador Dmitry Polyansky said council members renewed their call for the port at Hodeida, the entry point for vital aid deliveries and commercial goods, to remain open.
“We hope that nothing terrible happens in Hodeida,” said Polyansky whose country holds the council presidency this month.
Fierce fighting this month has displaced 5,200 families mostly from districts south of the city, UN officials said, adding that the number of those fleeing the violence was expected to rise.
The Saudi-led coalition launched an offensive on June 13 to drive out Yemen’s Houthi rebels from the Red Sea port city of 600,000.
Griffiths has been in talks with the Houthis and the coalition about the fate of Hodeida but there has been no breakthrough in the intense negotiations.