The Saudi-backed Yemeni government announced today that it had launched hundreds of strikes against Houthi positions, one day after the pro-Iranian militants announced an offensive aimed at retaking the entire country.
Since hostilities resumed in Yemen in July, following years of relative calm, the internationally recognized government has been struggling to halt the Houthis’ advance; yesterday, the Houthis surrounded Taiz, the country’s third-largest city.
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The Houthis attacked airports in Saudi Arabia
“Government forces launched 1,122 attacks” in the provinces of Sa’ada, Al-Jawf, Taiz, and the western coast,” said their spokesman Majid al-Nazili, according to the official Saba News Agency.
The forces used “fighter jets, unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), artillery fire, missiles, rocket launchers, and snipers,” he said.
“These operations resulted in the neutralization of 1,747 members of the paramilitary organization (Houthi) and the destruction or damage of 364 vehicles and pieces of military equipment,” Nazili added.
Two military sources stated, according to Reuters, that Yemeni government forces attacked Houthi positions in the Dhubab area, which overlooks the Bab al-Mandab Strait. The pro-government Giants Brigades stated that their first detachments had arrived in the Bab al-Mandeb area.
The Houthis generally do not comment on such statements by the government.
The pro-Iranian fighters, who seized control of the capital, Sana’a, in 2014 and subsequently large parts of northern Yemen, seized the western Red Sea coastline in September in a lightning-fast attack.
Yesterday, they cut off a key route connecting Taiz, a major city in the southwestern part of the country that they have now surrounded, to Aden, where the internationally recognized government—which had been forced into exile from Sana’a—has relocated its headquarters.
The head of Yemen’s so-called Presidential Council, Rashad al-Alimi, subsequently announced the launch of operations to retake the parts of the country controlled by the Houthis.
Source: KYPE
