Yemen troops strike deep inside Hodeida
hodeida — Yemeni pro-government forces backed by Saudi-led coalition warplanes advanced inside rebel-held Hodeida on Thursday.
After a week of intense battles with the Iran-backed Houthi militants 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 UAE-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 reported.
Three military sources said that government forces and their coalition allies were edging towards the city’s vital docks through which nearly 80 per cent of Yemen’s commercial imports and practically all UN-supervised humanitarian aid pass. —
aden — Houthi fighters battled Saudi-led forces in Yemen’s port city of Hodeida on Thursday and posted gunmen on the roof of a hospital, leaving doctors and young patients in the line of fire, rights groups and military sources said.
The Houthis raided the May 22 hospital in the city’s eastern suburbs, sources said, as clashes raged on in the face of mounting calls from world powers, including some of Saudi Arabia’s main Western allies, for a ceasefire.
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 “stomachchurning development”.
“This is a stomach-churning development that could have devastating consequences for the hospital’s medical workers and dozens of civilian patients, including many children,” said Amnesty’s International’s
Middle East Director of Campaigns, Samah Hadid.
Fighting was getting closer to the hospital and had already disrupted services there, the International Committee of the Red Cross added.
The latest fighting has focused on Hodeida’s eastern 7th July neighbourhoods and around a university just 4km from the port and a few blocks from Al Thawra hospital, the main medical facility on Yemen’s western coast.
After a week of intense battles on the outskirts of Hodeida, loyalist troops reached residential neighbourhoods, using bulldozers to remove concrete road blocks installed by the rebels, who have held the Red Sea port city since 2014.
Three military sources said that government forces and their Saudiled coalition allies were edging towards the city’s vital docks through which nearly 80 per cent of Yemen’s commercial imports and practically all UN-supervised humanitarian aid pass.
Columns headed for the port advanced two kilometres along the main road from the interior to the east and three kilometres along the coast road from the south, the sources said.
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 on the back of pickup trucks bearing their brigade logo spray-painted in red.
“Either the rebels surrender the city peacefully or we take it by force, but we will take it either way,” commander Moammar Al Saidy said.
Coalition warplanes bombed rebel positions as the ground forces advanced. At least 47 Houthi fighters were killed, hospital-sources in rebel-held areas said.
Medics at hospitals in government-held territory said 11 soldiers were killed.