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YEMEN-CONFLICT-REBELS
Death toll tops 100 in fight for key Yemen port: medics
KHOKHA, Yemen, June 2, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The battle for a major rebel-
controlled port in Yemen has left more than 100 soldiers and insurgents dead
in less than a week, medics and military sources said Saturday.
Yemeni forces are fighting to close in on the Red Sea port of Hodeida, the
main conduit for humanitarian supplies into a country where 22 million people
are in dire need of food aid.
Medics in the southern Aden governorate, where the Yemeni government is
based, said they had received the bodies of 52 people, including 20 soldiers,
between Friday and Saturday, bringing the toll to at least 110 killed in
clashes since Wednesday.
The remainder appeared to be rebels, the medics said.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source in the pro-government
military coalition said on Saturday the Huthi rebels had ambushed a military
convoy in the coastal district of al-Durayhmi in Hodeida governorate.
Loyalist fighters, backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,
last week announced they had launched an operation to enter Hodeida city and
seize the rebel-held port.
Hodeida lies 230 kilometres from the capital Sanaa, which the Iran-backed
Huthis seized in 2014, prompting a Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen
the following year.
The campaign, which continues to this day, aims to restore power to the
internationally recognised government of exiled President Abedrabbo Mansour
Hadi.
The Saudi-led coalition accuses the rebels of using Hodeida as a launchpad
for attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and for smuggling in rockets.
The insurgents have in recent months ramped up missile attacks against
neighbouring Saudi Arabia.
Nearly 10,000 people have been killed since the coalition launched its
military campaign in Yemen in March 2015.
More than 2,200 others have died from cholera and millions are on the
verge of famine in what the United Nations says is the world’s gravest
humanitarian crisis.
The UN warned last week that any operation aimed at seizing Hodeida would
disrupt the entry of aid shipments to Yemen, 70 percent of which flow through
the rebel-held port.
BSS/AFP/FI/ 1922 hrs