Fighting rages around airport in rebel-held city
Saudi-led forces fought to retake the international airport of Yemen’s rebel-held port city of Hodeida from the Shiite Houthi rebels, Yemeni officials and witnesses said on Saturday, as combat intensified for the starving nation’s main gateway for food shipments.
With battles raging at the southern side of al-Hodeida International Airport, the military of Yemen’s exiled government said it had entirely seized the facility, and that engineers were working to clear mines from nearby areas just south of the city of some 600,000 peo- ple on the Red Sea.
“The armed forces which are supported by the Arab coalition have freed the al-Hodeida International Airport from the Houthi militias and the engineering teams have started to clean the airport and its surroundings from mines and bombs,” the military said on its official Twitter account.
Other government officials and witnesses later said coalition forces had not yet fully taken control of the air- port. They said fighting was heavy just outside the air- port gates.
Sadek Dawad, spokesman of the Republican Guards force loyal to the Saudis, said government forces had battled onto the airport grounds.
Dawad also said the south- ern 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 strate- gic port and that won’t last too long,” he told The Asso- ciated Press.
Yemen’s Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who hold the country’s capital of Sanaa, did not immediately acknowledge losing 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 armored vehicle. The Iranian-aligned fighters rifled through a mil- itary ledger from the vehi- cle before chanting their slogan: “Death to Amer- ica, death to Israel, damn the Jews, victory to Islam!”
Yemeni officials and witnesses said forces from the United Arab Emirates-backed Amaleqa brigades, backed by air cover from the Saudi-led coalition, were heading to eastern Hodeida province to attempt to cut off the main road that links it with the capital, Sanaa.
The officials said if government forces capture the Kilo 16 Road they will trap the rebels in Hodeida and the western coast and prevent them from receiving supplies from the capital. The rebels are then expected to have no choice but to head to the northern province of Hajjah.
The Norwegian Refugee Council said humanitarian agencies cannot reach the southern part of Hodeida as fighting escalated.
It said in a statement that heavy airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition have moved confrontation lines deeper to the south.
United Nations special envoy Martin Griffiths, meanwhile arrived in Sanaa in an effort to broker a cease-fire.
The Saudi-led coalition began its assault Wednesday on Hodeida, the main entry for food into a country already on the brink of famine. Emirati forces are leading ground forces mixed with their own troops, irregular militiamen and soldiers backing Yemen’s exiled government. Saudi Arabia has provided air support, with targeting guidance and refueling coming from the U.S.