Khokha, Yemen: Air strikes and artillery fire killed 55 people near Yemen’s Hodeida, medical sources and residents said on Tuesday, as the UAE insisted Ansar Allah fighters pull out of the key port city. Hodeida port has been held by the Ansar Allah since 2014, when the fighters drove the government out of the capital and seized control of territory across northern Yemen and the Red Sea coastline. On June 13, a regional coalition launched a major offensive to retake the port, through which nearly three quarters of Yemen’s imports flow.
The coalition alleges the port has been used by the Ansar Allah as an entry point for weapons.
On Tuesday, medical sources and residents said an air strike killed eight people travelling on a bus on the road to Zabid in southern Hodeida.
A second strike outside Hodeida killed six Ansar Allah fighters travelling in a military vehicle, according to the same sources.
Exchanges of artillery fire south of Hodeida city also left 38 Ansar Allah fighters and three pro-government troops dead in the past 24 hours, according to medical and local sources.
The UN envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, is due in Yemen’s southern city of Aden on Wednesday for talks with President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, whose forces have battled for weeks to regain control of Hodeida.
The Ansar Allah fighters have said they may be willing to share control of Hodeida’s port with the United Nations but say their forces must remain in the docks and the rest of the Red Sea city.
The United Arab Emirates is demanding the Ansar Allah withdraw from both the port and city to avoid a military assault on densely-populated Hodeida. “We are hopeful and we believe in the political process,” Reem al Hashimi, the UAE Minister of State for International Cooperation, said on Tuesday. Griffiths, who held a first round of meetings on the Hodeida crisis in Sanaa earlier this month, is holding talks with both sides to “return rapidly to the negotiating table”, his office said. Nearly 10,000 people have died in the Yemen war. The conflict has pushed Yemen to the brink of famine. — AFP
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