Al Mukalla: Yemeni government forces and allied tribesmen are pushing Al Houthis further and further out of the northern province of Jawf amid heavy air strikes by Saudi-led coalition fighter jets.
Yemen’s Defence Ministry has said that Yemeni forces and resistance fighters have seized control of a village and a mountain in Baret Al Anan, one of several small districts that are still under Al Houthi control, after taking almost full control of Khab and Al Sha’af, the largest district in the province.
The ministry said that government forces stormed Shukan mountain and Shaman region after fierce clashes with the Iran-backed militants.
Backed by intensive air cover from the Saudi-led coalition, government forces in Jawf have recently scored major territorial gains in the province and pushed Al Houthis out from large swathes of Jawf’s desert.
They have also captured a strategic road that links the province with Saudi Arabia through Saada province, Al Houthi’s main heartland.
In Jawf’s Youtma district, government forces ousted Al Houthis from a chain of mountains in Al Mahmasha region.
The ministry said that army troops seized a stash of arms abandoned by the defeated militants.
By the end of last year, Yemen’s army managed to send military supplies to government forces in Saada’s Bouqa and Baqoum districts for the first time since the beginning of the war in 2015.
By escalating military operations in Jawf, Yemen’s internationally-recognised government seeks to besiege Saada from the east as to disrupt military supplies to and from the province.
Meanwhile, in the central province of Baydha, as many as seven Al Houthi militants have been killed and many others injured when government forces attacked their positions in Gayfa and Natea region.
Fighting has intensified in Baydha since late last year when government forces thrust into the province after taking full control of the neighbouring Shabwa province.
Yemeni forces are now fighting their way into two new districts in the provinces after Al Houthis lost thousands of fighters.
In the southeastern province of Hadramout, army troops foiled an Al Qaida attack on a military post in the district of Dawan.
The 2nd Military Region, based in Al Mukalla, Hadramout’s capital, said in a statement that Al Qaida militants attacked an army post with mortars and machine guns in Bedha’a region on Wednesday morning.
The soldiers responded to the attack, killing and injuring several attackers.
Al Qaida in Yemen suffered a major blow on Wednesday when UAE-backed Yemeni troops seized control of Al Sayed district, a militants’ major stronghold in the southern province of Shabwa.
