Al Mukalla: Yemeni government forces are making territorial gains outside Sana’a amid heavy aerial bombardment by warplanes from the Saudi-led Arab coalition, officials told Gulf News on Wednesday.
Officials and journalists accompanying the troops say they are making advances inside a range of mountain in Nehim district and stepping up attacks to cuts the flow of arms supplies to Al Houthis fighters in the area.
“Sana’a airport and the Republican Guards camps in Arhab are within the range of the government army cannons,” Major Mohsen Khasrouf, the chief of Yemen’s Armed Forces Moral Guidance Department and a veteran military analyst told Gulf News on Wednesday from the neighboring Marib province.
Citing the heavy presence of senior army commanders in Marib and Nehim, Khasrouf expected no lull in military operations in the short term before government forces reach Al Houthis controlled Sana’a.
“The presence of the army’s chief of staff and other army commanders who closely inspect and direct the battles in Sana’a province showed that president Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi ordered them to head to the capital. They would not have launched attacks without a green light from the president.”
Hadi has called on the national army and resistance to confront the coup militia decisively and strongly, so that Yemen can get rid of this coup gang which destroyed the state’s institutions, killed, wounded and kidnapped thousands of innocent people,” he said.
This week, the government-run Saba news agency reported that Hadi called the army’s chief of staff to thank him for “victories” on the fronts.
Analysts here, including Khasrouf, say the government and the Arab coalition resorted to the military operation after rebels refused to exit from cities during peace talks.
Meanwhile, Yemeni foreign minister Abdul Malik Al Mikhlafi has said that an attempt by Al Houthis and supporters of ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh to revive the parliament to approve their controversial political council would be deemed as a new declaration of war, predicting that many MPs would not attend the session.
“The putschists have declared a new war after announcing their political council,” he said on Wednesday in a press conference in Riyadh.
“The political council represents a challenge to Yemenis and the international community. It is constitutionally invalid,” he said.
Al Houthis and Saleh announced this week that they would call their representatives in the parliament to reconvene on Saturday to officially authorise their joint council to rule the country.
The rebels’ alliance with Saleh torpedoed the latest peace talks in Kuwait and triggered a wave of condemnation from the government, UN envoy to Yemen and the ambassadors of 18 countries sponsoring the political process in Yemen.
“They are trying to hijack the parliament to legalise their coup. We call upon political parties in Yemen to condemn this move,” Al Mikhlafi said.
