HODEIDA: Yemeni pro-government forces advanced into Ansar Allah-held Hodeida on Thursday, leaving hundreds of thousands of civilians bracing for fighting in the city’s streets.
Ansar Allah fighters battled Saudi-led forces in Hodeidah and posted gunmen on the roof of a hospital, leaving doctors and young patients in the line of fire, rights groups and military sources said.
Ansar Allah raided the May 22 hospital in the city’s eastern suburbs, sources said, as clashes raged on in the face of mounting calls from world powers, including some of Saudi Arabia’s main Western allies, for a ceasefire.
“This is a stomach-churning development that could have devastating consequences for the hospital’s medical workers and dozens of civilian patients, including many children,” said Amnesty’s International’s Middle East Director of Campaigns, Samah Hadid.
Fighting was getting closer to the hospital and had already disrupted services there, the International Committee of the Red Cross added.
Ansar Allah officials did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
UN bodies and other powers have warned that an all-out attack on the city, an entry point for 80 per cent of Yemen’s food imports and aid relief, could trigger a famine in the impoverished state.
The latest fighting has focused on Hodeidah’s eastern 7th July neighbourhoods and around a university just 4 km from the port and a few blocks from Al-Thawra hospital, the main medical facility on Yemen’s western coast.
After a week of intense battles on the outskirts of Hodeida, loyalist troops reached residential neighbourhoods, using bulldozers to remove concrete road blocks installed by Ansar Allah fighters, who have held the Red Sea port city since 2014.
Three military sources said that government forces and their coalition allies were edging towards the city’s vital docks.
Columns headed for the port advanced two kilometres along the main road from the interior to the east and three kilometres along the coast road from the south, the sources said.
Flashing victory signs, troops of the United Arab Emirates-trained Giants Brigade armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades rolled down the city’s streets on the back of pick-up trucks bearing their brigade logo spray-painted in red.
“Either the rebels surrender the city peacefully or we take it by force, but we will take it either way,” commander Moammar al Saidy said.
Coalition warplanes bombed rebel positions as the ground forces advanced. At least 47 Ansar Allah fighters were killed, hospital sources said. Medics at hospitals in government-held territory said 11 soldiers were killed. The deaths bring the overall toll from seven days of fighting to 250 combatants killed — 197 Ansar Allah fighters and 53 loyalists. — AFP/Reuters
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