Al Mukalla: The Saudi-led coalition will not leave Yemen until it restores peace to the country and rebuilds institutes damaged by the three-year war.
Speaking to Austrian journalists in Vienna during a visit last week, Colonel Turki Al Maliki said that the coalition and the internationally-recognised government of Yemen back “serious” peace talks with Al Houthis based on the GCC Initiative, outcomes of the National Dialogue and UN Security Council resolution 2216 that obliges Al Houthis to end their coup.
He vowed the coalition would not leave until the repressive rule of Iran-backed Al Houthis ended, the militants disarm and pull out of major cities.
Saudi Arabia and a number of allied countries began a massive military operation in Yemen in March 2015 in support of the internationally-recognised government of Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi after an Al Houthi coup overthrew the government and were close to taking control of the entire country.
Since then, the coalition has conducted a heavy aerial bombardment against Al Houthis and helped Yemen’s army by providing them with logistical support which has tilted the balance of the war in their favour and enabled the government to return to Yemen after seizing control of almost 80 per cent of the land.
Meanwhile, Sudan’s Armed Forces reaffirmed their active military participation in the Saudi-led coalition’s operations in Yemen, refuting media reports that hundreds of Sudanese soldiers would be withdrawn from the country.
Brigadier General Al Amin Yousuf Ebrahim, a Sudanese liaison officer at the Saudi-led coalition in Riyadh, told Sky News Arabia that Sudanese soldiers are “fighting fiercely” alongside their Yemeni and Saudi-led coalition soldiers on many battlefields in Yemen and are determined to successfully achieve their mission.
“We are in the trenches, fighting in high spirits. We would achieve the objective that we came for along with other brothers in the legitimate government and the Saudi-led coalition,” Ebrahim said.
Meanwhile on the battlefield, fighting raged between government forces and Al Houthis in different locations in the southern province of Taiz and western province of Hodeida where government forces scored limited gains after killing dozens of Al Houthis. Yemen’s Defence Ministry said at least 30 Al Houthis were killed in heavy clashes with government in the Al Bareh region, west of Taiz city, and loyalists seized control of new mountains and cut off supply lines to some Al Houthi locations in theKahboub and Al Ameri regions after taking control of a road that connects Albareh with Kahboub.
Backed the Saudi-led coalition, Yemeni troops launched an offensive on Al Houthi-held areas west of Taiz with the aim of protecting liberated regions on the Red Sea from Al Houthis’ sporadic shelling and cleaning the road for a larger offensive on Hodeida city, the last major portal city under Al Houthi control.
