Yemen allies push to oust rebels

COALITION VICTORY: FORCES SURROUND PORT CITY

But UN warns of human catastrophe if a settlement cannot be reached.

Al Duraihmi

Yemeni pro-government forces, backed by Saudi Arabia, battled Huthi rebels around the key port city of Hodeida yesterday, as a top UN envoy held crisis talks with the insurgents in the capital.

Saudi Arabia and its allies in a regional military coalition, launched an offensive on Wednesday aimed at retaking the Red Sea city of Hodeida, home to the country’s most valuable port and controlled by the Iran-backed Huthis.

The United Nations has warned the offensive could spark a fresh humanitarian crisis in a country already hit by war and impending famine.

It sent its top envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, to the capital Sanaa to talk to the rebels.

More than 70% of imports to all of Yemen pass through the sea port of rebel-held Hodeida.

Yemen’s military forces have closed in on areas south and west of the port, pushing closer to an airport just south of the docks, sources in the army said.

The army on Saturday claimed it had seized the defunct Hodeida airport, which has been in Huthi hands since 2014. The Shiite rebels, however, denied the claim in a statement on their Saba news agency yesterday.

They have also reported Saudi air strikes on Huthi outposts across Hodeida.

The highway between Hodeida and the government-held port of Mokha was cut off on Friday in battles between the two warring sides, disrupting precious supply lines to the military.

The UN and relief organisations have warned that an all-out assault on Hodeida by the Saudi-led coalition, which commands a massive joint air force, would put hundreds of thousands of people at risk. The fighting is already nearing densely populated residential areas, rights groups have warned, and aid distributions have been suspended in the west of the city.

At least 139 combatants have been killed since the launch of the operation on Wednesday, according to medical and military sources, most of them rebels.

The Huthi rebels drove Yemen’s government out of Sanaa in 2014, pushing President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi into exile and sparking an intervention by Saudi Arabia and its allies.

The Saudi-led coalition earlier this year imposed a near-total blockade on Hodeida port, on allegations that it served as a major conduit for arms smuggling to the rebels by Riyadh’s regional arch rival Iran.

The potential capture of Hodeida would be the coalition’s biggest victory of the war so far.

Meanwhile, rebel leader Abdul Malik al-Huthi has urged his forces to put up fierce resistance and “turn the region into a quagmire” for the Saudi-led coalition troops.