26 killed as Yemeni forces push rebels back

ADEN — At least 26 Yemeni fighters died in fresh clashes and an air strike as government forces advanced against Shiite Houthi rebels near a key shipping strait, medics and officials said Saturday.

A week-long assault by government forces and their allies aims to expel the Iran-backed Houthis from Dhubab region, close to the Bab Al Mandab Strait linking the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.

Twelve bodies of Houthi insurgents were taken early Saturday to a hospital in rebel-held Hodeida, a medical official said, adding that the facility received 23 others wounded.

He said the casualties were from clashes on Friday night in Dhubab.

An overnight air strike by a pro-government Arab coalition on a rebel assembly in Zaydiya, in Hodeida province, left another nine Houthis dead, a security official said. 

The Red Sea port city of Hodeida lies some 200 kilometres north of Dhubab.

A medical official at a hospital in Aden said five pro-government fighters were killed in overnight clashes around Dhubab and 14 others wounded.

Forces loyal to President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and allied fighters from the Popular Resistance have entered the town of Dhubab and seized its local government headquarters.

Popular Resistance commander Abdelrahman Al Muharami said the loyalists had also recaptured large parts of Al Omeri military base in mountains overlooking the coast.

“There are still some rebel pockets” in the base, he said.

The government and its allies in the Saudi-led coalition recaptured Bab Al Mandab Strait in October 2015, pushing the rebels further north.

But the rebels still control nearly all of Yemen’s Red Sea coast to the north, posing what the coalition says is a threat to international shipping.

Yemen’s conflict has killed more than 7,400 people and wounded nearly 40,000 since it escalated with the coalition intervention in March 2015 after the Houthis seized large swathes of the country, according to the United Nations.