Yemen offensive kills scores of Houthi leaders

Scores of Houthi field commanders have been killed in Yemen as the Arab coalition’s support of military efforts to restore the internationally recognised government are boosted by the growing number of recruits joining the fight against the Iran-backed rebels.

Thousands of volunteers have signed up for military service with the Yemeni National Resistance Forces under the leadership of Staff Brigadier-General Tarek Mohamed Abdullah Saleh, state news agency Wam reported yesterday.

Gen Saleh’s forces are campaigning on the Red Sea Coast in the direction of Mocha and Al Barah, west of Taez, in an attempt to regain control of the area and pave the way for humanitarian support to be delivered to the people there.

“We are training the new recruits and equip them with all available advanced weaponry to help in the ongoing battles side by side with their Yemeni siblings against the Iranian-led scheme and restore control over the usurped lands,” Wam quoted a Resistance Force source as saying.

Al Arabiya reported yesterdat that Houthi leader, Khalid Silan, also known as Abu Hussein, had been killed during an Arab coalition air raid in Al Tifa. Silan provided weaponry and supplies in the region.

Saudi air defences on Friday intercepted a ballistic missile fired at Jazan by Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The thwarted attack was the latest in a series of attempted missile strikes on the southern coastal city.

The outgoing head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Yemen says more people are now dying from indirect effects of the conflict than bombing, shelling and ground attacks.

Alexandre Faite gave 2,000 deaths from cholera and acute watery diarrhoea in the past six months as an example, as well as citing the crumbling health system, a shortage of power in most towns and the absence of key commodities (or availability only at high prices).

He told reporters he has been travelling to capital cities such as Berlin, Brussels, Paris and Washington to deliver the message that “the situation in Yemen and the results of indirect effects of the hostilities are really dire”. With the high death toll from cholera, Mr Faite said, “I would think … that now more people are dying from the indirect effect of the hostilities.”

Yemen’s civil war began six months after Houthi rebels and their allies seized the capital Sanaa, in September 2014. A Saudi-led coalition has been trying to restore the internationally recognised government to power but the conflict has reached a stalemate, with the Houthis still in control of Sanaa and much of the north.

UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock told the Security Council on Tuesday that Yemen remains “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis” with three-quarters of the population – more than 22 million people – urgently needing humanitarian help. In addition, 8.4 million are struggling to find their next meal.

Before the war, Yemen relied on imports for 90 per cent of its staple food, medicine and fuel, but Mr Lowcock said delays at ports and shortages led to sharp increases in prices of food and household necessities, forcing hundreds of thousands of destitute families to turn to humanitarian aid.

Mr Faite said “humanitarian aid will not be the solution”.

“Economic life is key,” he said. “A country cannot run on humanitarian assistance ... what is also vitally important is that commercial items, imports, commercial life, is really allowed to resume.”

Mr Faite said the indirect effects of the war on Yemen’s crumbling infrastructure, the failure to pay health workers, teachers and civil servants, “is really impacting the life of the everyday Yemeni”.

Mr Faite said, the ICRC is supporting six kidney dialysis centres in the north, where no others are functioning, and it has also been providing insulin to Yemenis with diabetes.

For people whose lives depend on this, if “you don’t get it one week, the next week you will not be around”, he said.

The war has also damaged power plants and it is estimated that only 10 per cent of Yemenis have access to power in towns and cities, Mr Faite said. So generators are crucial for electricity and to pump stations for water supplies. He said the ICRC and the UN children’s agency, Unicef, had joined forces so that when there was a breakdown “we repair the pumps, they repair the generators of the pumping stations”.

“If this was not done with Unicef providing the fuel, it’s not very clear if there would be running water in the city, if there would be running water at all,” Mr Faite said.

All parties, he said, needed to sit down to see what can be done to speed up commercial shipping, especially in the northern port of Hodeida.

Meanwhile, a Lebanese Red Cross employee was shot in his car in the southern city of Taez yesterday, the ICRC said.

“I’m shocked, outraged and profoundly saddened by the killing of my colleague and friend Hanna Lahoud,” tweeted Robert Mardini, Middle East director for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“We @ICRC condemn this senseless act in the strongest possible terms,” he wrote. “My thoughts go out to Hanna’s wife and family in #Lebanon.”

The ICRC said Lahoud, who was in charge of prisoners’ affairs in Yemen, was on his way to visit a prison when his car was attacked by gunmen.

He died in hospital but colleagues in the car were unhurt. He was killed by multiple shots to the heart, said a hospital source. The back window of the car was shattered in the attack in the Zabab district of Taez, said an AFP photographer at the scene.