Fighting escalates across Yemen

Aden/Cairo, April 26

Air raids, naval shelling and ground fighting shook Yemen on Sunday in some of the most widespread combat since a Saudi-led alliance intervened last month against Iranian-allied Houthi militia who have seized wide areas of the country.

There were at least five air strikes on military positions and an area near the presidential palace compound in the Houthi-held capital Sanaa at dawn on Sunday, while warships pounded an area near the port of the southern city of Aden, residents said.

“The explosions were so big they shook the house, waking us and our kids up. Life has really become unbearable in this city,” a Sanaa resident who gave his name as Jamal told Reuters.

The strikes on Sanaa were the first since the Saudi-led coalition said last week it was scaling back a campaign against the Houthis. But the air raids soon resumed as the Houthis’ nationwide gains had not been notably rolled back, and there has been no visible progress toward peace talks.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter and arch Sunni Muslim regional adversary of Shi’ite Muslim Iran, feels menaced by the Shi’ite Houthi advance across Yemen since last September, when the rebels captured the capital.

The Houthis later forced President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi into exile. The Saudi-led intervention aims to restore Hadi and prevent Yemen disintegrating as a state, with Al-Qaida militants thriving in the chaos and one of the world’s busiest oil shipping lanes off the Yemeni coast at risk.

Eyewitnesses in Aden said foreign warships shelled Houthi emplacements around the city’s main commercial port and dockyard, the first time they had been targeted.

Aden residents reported heavy clashes between local armed militia from Yemen’s Sunni south and Houthis backed up by army units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Medics reported that four civilians were killed when a rocket landed in a street and shelling damaged a main hospital. — Reuters