Yemen army closes in on Taez palace

aden — Yemeni government forces fought on Saturday to capture a rebel-held presidential palace in the southwestern province of Taez after clashes that killed 27 people, medics and military sources said.

Most of Taez province is controlled by Houthi rebels, who are battling forces allied with UN backed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi holed up in the provincial capital of the same name.

Medics at the rebel-controlled Thamar Government Hospital in Taez, Yemen’s third city, said 19 Houthis had been killed in clashes over the past 24 hours.

Military sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, reported eight soldiers dead during the same period as the army closed in on the presidential palace. The palace is under the control of Houthis who are allied with former soldiers loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh. —

> The kitchen where the 30,000 Iftar meals are cooked daily starts at 4am and works round the clock > It resembles an action-packed movie set where head chefs move around supervising the work and rapping out orders to their assistants

> Men wearing caps and gloves work like programmed robots going about their specific task with mechanical precision

> The kitchen is divided into various sections for cooking rice, meat and vegetables

> There are men whose only job is to open hundreds of rice sacks and empty them into carts

> A team of three men is responsible for peeling onions all day (we are talking about 600kg of onions)

> There are five rice stations and 500 litres of water is used to cook 35kg of rice in one turn

> 11 huge cauldrons are used to cook meat and 20 for cooking salona. Each pot can take 25kg of potatoes, 14kg of carrots, 20kg of marrow and 25kg of tomatoes