Al Houta liberation ‘to secure Aden’

Sana’a: Yemeni government troops newly-trained by a Saudi-led coalition battling Yemen’s militia routed Al Qaida militants on Friday from a city in the country’s south, military officials said.

Al Houta, the capital of Lahej province, is now firmly under government control, the officials said. The coalition-trained troops, which are loyal to Yemen’s internationally recognised government, were based in the southern Al Anad base from where they launched the fight to retake the provincial capital, they added.

The officials said the militants fled on Friday from Al Houta to nearby towns and farmland.

Soldiers and police drove the terrorists out of Al Houta, 30 kilometres north of Aden, and arrested 49 suspected militants, they said.

A military official said the operation to liberate Al Houta was “designed to secure Aden”, where Hadi’s government has temporarily based itself.

A car bomb exploded on Friday in the port city near a building housing the foreign ministry, without causing casualties, security sources said.

The assault came at a time the coalition helicopters and US drones have waged series of air strikes targeting Al Qaida hideouts and strongholds across Yemen’s southern region. The group has exploited the conflict between Al Houthi militia and government forces to expand its foothold in Yemen.

This week, the coalition’s Apaches carried air strikes in the town of Koud in Abyan province, killing at least 10 militants and wounding others. US drones also struck a sprawling training camp in the southern province of Hadramawt, killing more than 50 militants last week.

Al Qaida in Yemen is seen as the group’s most dangerous offshoot. It was also the group that claimed responsibility for the attack on the office of satirical French newspaper ‘Charlie Hebdo’ in January 2015, killing a dozen people. The group has lost its top leaders in drone strikes last year after seizing the city of Al Mukalla, the Hadramawt capital.

The raids on Al Qaida come as Yemen’s warring parties have agreed to an open-ended ceasefire that began Sunday ahead of peace talks due next week. Both sides have reported violations of the truce, particularly in the city of Taiz, which the militia have besieged for nearly a year, and in the outskirts of the capital, Sana’a.

The coalition launched an air campaign against Al Houthi militia in March last year to reinstate Yemen’s government after Al Houthis expelled it from Sana’a and forced it into exile.

Complicating the dire situation in Yemen, heavy rainfall this week in several parts of the country caused flooding and killed dozens of people. On Friday, a security official said three people died and dozens of houses collapsed in at least 19 villages in the coastal province of Hodeida on the Red Sea. The flooding caused damage to property and cut off roads linking the province to the capital.

On Thursday, the floods killed at least 16 while dams collapsed in northern provinces of Hadjja and Amran.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media.