Intense fight seeks to drive rebels from key port city

SANAA, Yemen — Street battles raged Sunday in several areas of Yemen’s contested port city of Hodeida, where a U.S.backed, Saudi-led coalition is trying to drive out Iran-backed Shiite rebels, officials said.

Air strikes from warplanes and Apache attack helicopters shook residential neighborhoods throughout the day, while ground forces clashed around the university in the city’s south, as well as al-Thawra and May 22 hospitals to the east.

Residents said they heard heavy gunfire and saw smoke rising from both areas, with several military vehicles on fire near the university. Intense fighting around al-Thawra Hospital blocked access to it for hours, while rebels retook the May 22 hospital after it fell briefly to the coalition, they said. Photos of damaged hospital buildings have been circulating on social media.

Closer to the port facilities, the gateway for vital humanitarian aid, rebel gunmen occupied one the country’s largest flour mills and posted fighters on its rooftop, one official added. He said efforts were ongoing to evacuate workers inside the site he feared could now be targeted by air strikes.

Medical officials in the southern port city of Aden, a coalition stronghold, say some public hospitals there have reached capacity from a steady flow of war wounded from contested fronts across Yemen, and are refusing to accept new patients except for some civilians with critical wounds.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

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

The war has killed an estimated 10,000 people, and left around two thirds of Yemen’s population of 27 million relying on aid, with more than 8 million at risk of starvation.

Also Sunday, a minister who served in the rebel government before defecting to Saudi Arabia was struck by a shoe hurled by a Yemeni journalist at a news conference in Riyadh. Abdul-Salam Ali Gaber, who served as information minister, is the most senior member of the Houthi administration to defect. Throwing a shoe is a show of deep contempt in Arab culture.