Al Mukalla: At least ten civilians were killed and 14 injured on Monday evening when a missile said to be fired by Al Houthi rebels ripped through their houses in a small rugged village in the southern province of Taiz, residents and activists said.
Ali Al Sarari, a human right activist from the city of Taiz, told Gulf News on Tuesday that the missile destroyed three houses in the village, killing entire families, and that residents were now using their bare hands and agricultural tools to find survivors or retrieve the dead from the debris.
“The village is under the control of the [pro-government] resistance. It is totally isolated from other areas due to the war and its location,” he said.
Al Sarari thinks the critically injured villagers might die before getting medial help as they have to cross Al Houthi-held territory to reach health facilities in the city. “They have to take dangerous slopes to avoid Al Houthi checkpoints. The village has no proper health facilities able to treat that large number of victims,” he said. “I think it was a ballistic missile fired by Al Houthis from military sites in Taiz. The village is neither a battleground or hosts a big military presence.”
Al Houthis’ official media said the civilians were killed in Saudi-led coalition warplanes.
Meanwhile, army commanders and government officials in the southern province of Shabwa told Gulf News that as many as 17 government forces and dozens of Al Houthis fighters were killed in fierce clashes in many places.
Clashes flared up on Monday morning when the government forces backed by heavy air support from the Saudi-led coalition warplanes, attacked Al Houthi sites in Ousylan and Bayhan. “Al Houthis deployed their snipers on hilly locations in the two districts. The resistance fighters were prompted into retreating after those snipers killed 17 and injured more than 13 on Monday,” a government official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to brief reporters.
Coalition warplanes struck the snipers and Al Houthi military supplies, killing dozens of their fighters, the official said. Also in Shabwa, unidentified men gunned down a military official on Tuesday in the province’s capital, Attaq. The same official said that the assailants opened fire at Colonel Mohammad Salem Ben Laqshem, the deputy director of Civil Status in the province, killing him on the spot.
Outside the capital, Abdullah Al Sandaqi, the Sana’a resistance spokesperson, said on Tuesday that the government forces ejected Al Houthis from two mountains in Nehim district and seized rocket launchers and armed vehicles.
