Al Mukalla: Fighting raged outside Al Houthi-held Sana’a for the third consecutive day on Thursday as Yemen’s vice-president urged government troops to press on with their offensive, local army commanders and journalists told Gulf News.
Government forces and fighter jets from the Saudi-led coalition killed at least a dozen Al Houthi militants, destroyed four armed vehicles and seized three others on Thursday, a local journalist who visited the front lines said in a telephone interview.
The journalist, who requested anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the press, said that bodies of dozens of Al Houthis have been left behind on the battlefield amid intense fighting.
“Fighting has been raging since Tuesday. Government forces are advancing while Al Houthis are fleeing, ” the journalist said.
Weeks of intense air strikes and heavy shelling on Al Houthis positions on Nehim’s rugged mountains have paved the way for government forces to make advances.
On Wednesday, a Yemeni army spokesperson, Abdo Abdullah Majili, told Gulf News that government forces liberated as many as 20 locations in Nehim and killed tens of Al Houthi militants.
The fighting intensified in Nehim as the country’s vice-president, Ali Mohsen Al Ahmar visited the front lines and met with senior army commanders leading the fighting against Al Houthis.
The state-run Saba news agency reported that general Al Ahmar urged tribes in Sana’a to defect from Al Houthi movement and join advancing government troops.
Al Ahmar also called on army and security soldiers backing Al Houthis to desert the rebels and fight alongside government forces.
Despite mounting many offensives in the area in the past, government forces have only been able to make limited advances in Nehim.
Their last big victory was last year when they seized control of a military base in Nehim district.
Meanwhile, fighting continued in the provinces of Hajja, Jawf and Taiz amid heavy air strikes from coalition fighter jets.
Army commanders in the northern province of Jawf said on Wednesday that their forces engaged in heavy clashes with the rebels in Al Masloub and Khab Al Sha’af districts.
In the southern city of Taiz, resident said that several civilians were killed when Al Houthi militants shelled residential areas on the eastern side of the city.
Yemen’s president Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi fled Sana’a in 2014 after Al Houthis put him under house arrest and killed many of his bodyguards.
He decamped to the port city of Aden where he is leading a military campaign to restore his presidency, which is internationally-recognised.
The Saudi-led coalition has also intervened to help Hadi put an end to the rapid military expansion of the Iran-backed rebels.
