Yemen troops advance into rebel-held Hodeida

Fourteen million ‘on brink of famine’: charities

HODEIDA, Yemen, Nov 8, (Agencies): Yemeni progovernment forces backed by Saudi-led coalition warplanes advanced inside rebel-held Hodeida Thursday, leaving hundreds of thousands of civilians bracing for fighting in the streets of the Red Sea port city.

After a week of intense battles with the Iran-backed Houthi insurgents on the outskirts of Hodeida, loyalist troops reached residential neighbourhoods, using bulldozers to remove concrete road blocks installed by the rebels.

Flashing victory signs, troops of the United Arab Emirates-trained Giants Brigade armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades rolled down the city’s streets in pickup trucks bearing their brigade logo spray-painted in red, a journalist working for AFP reported.

Three military sources said that government forces and their coalition allies were edging towards the city’s vital docks through which nearly 80 percent of Yemen’s commercial imports and practically all UN-supervised humanitarian aid pass.

Columns headed for the port advanced 2 kms (more than a mile) along the main road from the interior to the east and 3 kms (nearly two miles) along the coast road from the south, the sources said.

“Either the rebels surrender the city peacefully or we take it by force, but we will take it either way,” commander Moammar al-Saidy told AFP.

Coalition warplanes bombed rebel positions as the ground forces advanced.

At least 47 Houthi fighters were killed, hospital sources in rebel-held areas told AFP.

Medics at hospitals in government-held territory said 11 soldiers were killed.

The deaths bring the overall toll from seven days of fighting to 250 combatants killed — 197 rebels and 53 loyalists.

Aid group Save the Children has confirmed the death of one civilian, a 15-year-old boy who died of shrapnel wounds sustained just outside the city.

The Houthis have controlled Hodeida since 2014 when they overran the capital Sanaa and then swept though much of the rest of the country, triggering Saudi-led military intervention the following year and a devastating war of attrition.

The rebels have since been driven out of virtually all of the south and much of the Red Sea coast.

Government forces launched their offensive to retake Hodeida in June backed by significant numbers of Emirati ground troops.

Their advance into the city of some 600,000 people has been slowed by trenches and minefields dug by the rebels around their last major coastal stronghold, an army source said.

Rebel chief Abdulmalik al-Houthi vowed late on Wednesday that his fighters would never surrender to the Saudi-led coalition despite being seriously outnumbered.

“The enemy benefits from its numbers, which it has increased even further to pressure the city of Hodeida,” he said.

“Does the enemy think that penetrating this or that area, or seizing this or that area, means we will be convinced that we should surrender and hand over control?

“This is not happening and will not happen ever.”

North Hodeida is still under total rebel control.

While some shops had shuttered their windows, a vegetable market was bustling as armed men could be seen patrolling the area.

Pedestrians and cars poured into Jizan Road, a main street in the city’s north.

Human rights groups have voiced fears that a protracted battle for the city will exact heavy civilian casualties and force a halt to vital food shipments.

UN agencies say some 14 million people are at risk of famine in Yemen, which they have described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Aid groups have appealed to both the rebels and the coalition to provide safe passage for fleeing civilians and halt fighting around hospitals.

On Thursday, Amnesty International accused the rebels of “deliberate militarisation” of one of Hodeida’s main hospitals.

The human rights group said the Houthis had posted snipers on the roof of a hospital in the May 22 district, calling the action a “stomach-churning development”.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned that the fighting had neared health centres, including the city’s biggest hospital.

“We’re running out of words to describe how wretched the situation is,” said Fabrizio Carboni, ICRC’s Middle East director.

Nearly 10,000 Yemenis have been killed since 2015, according to the WHO.

Human rights groups say the real death toll may be five times as high.

Multiple UN-sponsored efforts to broker a power-sharing agreement between the government and the rebels have failed.

A UN push to convene peace talks in Switzerland collapsed in September as the rebels stayed away, saying they had not received sufficient guarantees for their safe passage.

UN special envoy Martin Griffiths on Wednesday said he aimed to hold peace talks by the end of the year.

Aid groups warned of the plight of civilians in Yemen’s contested Hodeida where casualties are mounting as a Saudi-led coalition is fighting to take the port city from the country’s Shiite rebels.

Separate from the warning, a collection of aid groups, including CARE and 34 others, issued a statement on Thursday, calling for an immediate cease-fire in Yemen.

Amnesty International warned late Wednesday that rebels have taken up positions on a Hodeida hospital rooftop, raising concerns they are using the hospital’s patients as human shields to ward off coalition airstrikes. Doctors Without Borders, meanwhile, said it was treating two dozen wounded from the latest offensive.

The push against the Iran-backed rebels also known as Houthis who are holding Hodeida began anew this month, shortly after the United States called for a cease-fire by the end of the month.

Apparently in a rush to try to take Hodeida before then, coalition artillery, helicopter gunships and airstrikes have pounded the rebels, with dozens killed on both sides. The rebels admit they are outnumbered but have vowed to fight on.

Cease-fires in Yemen’s civil war have rarely held, and peace talks have repeatedly broken down in the past.

Amnesty urged the warring sides to protect civilians. It said that the coalition, which relies heavily on air power, has killed scores of civilians in recent airstrikes, and rebels are responding with mortars in residential neighborhoods that cause indiscriminate casualties.

“The presence of Houthi fighters on the hospital’s roof violates international humanitarian law,” said Amnesty’s Samah Hadid, adding that “this violation does not make the hospital and the patients and medical staff lawful targets” for the coalition.

Hadid said the hospital was full of wounded “civilians who have nowhere else to go for lifesaving medical care. Anyone attacking a hospital under these conditions risks responsibility for war crimes.”

The conflict in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, began with the 2014 takeover of the capital, Sanaa, by the Houthis who toppled the internationally recognized government. The Saudi-led coalition has been fighting the rebels since 2015, in an attempt to restore that government to power.

In recent days, fighting intensified with troops trained by the United Arab Emirates, a coalition member, advanced in eastern Hodeida, pushing toward the city’s port and key Red Sea facilities, some 5 kms (3 miles) away.

In their statement, CARE and 34 other groups urged the international community to “secure an immediate cessation of hostilities” and “suspend the supply of arms at risk of being used in Yemen.” The United States sells most of the weapons used by the coalition, while the rebels largely use local stocks. The Houthis have also been accused of firing Iran-made missiles into Saudi Arabia and at coalition ships.

Doctors Without Borders reported an influx of wounded civilians in recent days, with 24 wounded, including women and children from Hodeida, with mostly blast and gunshot injuries.

The aid group, known under its French acronym MSF, said civilians were reported leaving Hodeida over the weekend but that it was difficult to assess how many remained trapped inside.

The Saudi-backed Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi appointed a new defense minister to fill a role that had been empty for several years, naming Mohammed al-Maqdishi for the post, according to the state SABA news agency late Wednesday. He also appointed Abdullah al-Nakhi as the new chief of staff, the agency reported.

The Yemeni president replaced the defence minister and the army chief of staff on Thursday, as government forces press a five-month assault on the rebel-held port of Hodeida, state media said.

President Mansour Hadi named Mohammed al-Maqdashi as defence minister to replace Mahmoud al-Subaihi who has been detained by the rebels for years, the government-run Saba news agency reported.

Hadi had not replaced the detained minister since 2014, when the rebels overran the capital Sanaa.