Fighting rages at city airport

Saudi-led forces fought to retake the international airport of Yemen’s rebel-held port city of Hodeida, Yemeni officials and witnesses said on Saturday, as their Shiite Houthi rebel rivals denied the coalition had seized the facility that is the starving nation’s main gateway for food shipments.

With battles raging at the southern side of Hodeida International Airport, the military of Yemen’s exiled government said it had entirely seized the compound, and that engineers were working to clear mines from nearby areas just south of the city of some 600,000 people on the Red Sea.

‘‘The armed forces which are supported by the Arab coalition have freed Hodeida International Airport from the Houthi militias and the engineering teams have started to clear the airport and its surroundings from mines and bombs,’’ the military said on its official Twitter account.

Sadek Dawad, spokesman of the Republican Guards force loyal to the Saudi-led coalition, said government forces had battled their way on to the airport’s grounds.

Dawad also said the southern gate of Hodeida city was captured by pro-coalition forces. ‘‘The military operations to liberate the city of Hodeida will not be stopped until we secure the city and its strategic port and that won’t last too long,’’ he said.

Houthi-linked civil aviation authorities, however, denied that the Saudi-led coalition and Yemeni forces have taken control of Hodeida’s airport.

A statement posted Saturday on the Houthis’ official news agency, Saba, quoted Ahmed Taresh, the head of Hodeida airport, as adding that airstrikes have completely destroyed the airport. The Houthi-run Al Masirah satellite news channel aired footage it described as being from near Hodeida showing a burned-out truck, corpses of irregular fighters and a damaged Emirati armoured vehicle. The Iranian-aligned fighters rifled through a military ledger from the vehicle before chanting their slogan: ‘‘Death to America, death to Israel, damn the Jews, victory to Islam!’’ –