Fighting escalates at critical port city

HODEIDA, Yemen — Fighting raged Saturday around the international airport outside the port of Hodeida as fighters with a Saudi-led Arab coalition pressed their 4-day-old offensive to seize control of the rebelheld city that is the gateway for food supplies to famine-stricken Yemen.

Officials loyal to Yemen’s exiled government said the coalition had seized the airport. But Iran-backed Houthi rebels launched a counteroffensive amid reports of heavy fighting at the airport gates and inside the sprawling compound.

The attacking force in Hodeida is commanded by the United Arab Emirates, a close ally of Saudi Arabia, and includes allied Yemeni and Sudanese fighters.

As the fighting escalated, the U.N. special envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, landed in Sanaa in an effort to broker a cease-fire. The United Nations and international aid agencies are warning of dire consequences if the fighting stops operations at Hodeida’s port, which is the entry point for 70 percent of food and fuel supplies in a country where 8 million people are on the brink of starvation.

The battle for Hodeida is shaping up to be the biggest and possibly most consequential of a war that started in 2015 when the Saudi-led coalition attacked the Houthis, who had seized the Yemeni capital a year earlier.

Mohammed Ali Kalfood and Declan Walsh are New York Times writers.