Fighting grinds on in Yemen, rebels say halting Saudis

FIGHTING in Yemen’s grueling civil war ground on Tuesday, with Houthi rebels saying they halted the advances of their adversaries, the U.S.-backed, Saudiled Arab coalition seeking to oust them from power. Combat continued around the key port city of Hodeida, where the Iranbacked Shiite rebels said in an overnight statement that a three-pronged coalition assault had been stopped with heavy fighting around the city’s outskirts, acknowledging that they had lost at least 30 men and a dozen armored vehicles.

Yemen has been wracked by conflict since 2014, when Shiite Houthi rebels overran much of the country. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the former defense minister, and Saudi Arabia’s allies launched Operation Decisive Storm in March 2015. Riyadh has accused the Houthi rebel group of serving as a proxy force for Iran, Saudi Arabia’s arch foe in the region. Civilians have borne the brunt of the conflict, which has killed over 10,000 people and sparked the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. In September, the Saudi-led coalition admitted that mistakes were made in an August airstrike that killed 40 children, an event considered an apparent war crime by the U.N. human rights body. The U.S. has made a call to end the war, but there was no reference to the future of its arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The U.N. has made no progress in attempts to get the warring sides to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the conflict.