Reuters/Cairo/Aden
Jets from a Saudi-led alliance bombed the runway of Yemen's Sanaa airport on Tuesday to prevent an Iranian plane from landing there, Saudi Arabia said, as fighting across the country killed at least 30 people.
Yemeni Vice President Khaled Bahah had called on the Houthis on Monday to heed a U.N. Security Council demand for an end to fighting, which the Red Cross says has pushed Yemen into a humanitarian catastrophe.
Houthis seized the capital Sanaa last September, demanding a more inclusive government and crackdown on graft. Talks with President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi collapsed and he fled into exile. Chaos set in as Houthi forces swept southwards, fighting loyalist army units, regional tribes and al Qaeda militants.
Top world oil exporter Saudi Arabia, rattled by what it sees as expanding Iranian influence in the region, has been leading a Gulf Arab coalition in waging air strikes on Houthi targets since late March. Riyadh said the campaign moved to a new phase last week, but fighting has intensified again since Sunday.
In Sanaa, airport officials said that Saudi-led warplanes had struck a civilian aircraft operated by Yemeni Felix Airways, setting it ablaze, as well as a cargo plane.
An official at the Yemeni civil aviation authority said the runway was targeted by 20 sorties that destroyed both the take-off and landing runway. The damage will further complicate humanitarian efforts to fly urgently needed aid into Yemen.
A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition said air force planes bombed the runway to stop an Iranian flight landing after it refused to coordinate with the coalition and the pilot ignored orders to turn back.
Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri told Reuters the bombing of the runway made it unusable for planned aid flights.
Iranian state news agency IRNA, confirming the incident, said the pilots had ignored "illegal" warnings from Saudi jets to turn back before the runway was bombed. The agency said the plane was carrying humanitarian aid to Sanaa.
Saudi Arabia had declared Yemen's airspace and coastline off limits to prevent delivery of arms supplies to the Houthis.
A civil aviation official said the airport at the Red Sea city of Hodeidah had also been bombed, but the extent of the damage to the runway was not immediately clear.
Houthi leader's home bombed
Earlier on Tuesday, Saudi-led jets bombed a private villa that nearby residents said belonged to Abdullah Yahya Hakim, a senior Houthi official who was among a number of officials blacklisted by the U.N. Security Council in November.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from the strikes on the airport or Hakim's residence.
Local residents also reported heavy clashes overnight in oil-producing Marib province east of Sanaa, in the city of Taiz in central Yemen, and in the southern port city of Aden.
At least 15 people were killed in the district of Sirwah and around Marib city, the sources said, as tribesmen allied with Hadi tried to stop Houthis and troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh from advancing on the provincial capital.
The Houthis say their advance on Marib is to flush out militants belonging to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), one of the most active branches of the Sunni Muslim militant network and an enemy of the Shia Muslim Houthis.
In the southern province of al-Dhalea, local militiamen said they had killed at least 13 fighters from the Houthi group and troops loyal to Saleh in two separate ambushes. Snipers in Aden also shot and killed two civilians, residents said.
As the civil war rages on and the impoverished country sinks deeper into a humanitarian emergency, Yemenis warn that it will get ever harder to restore credible central state authority, raising the risk to nearby oil shipping lanes.
Vice President pleads for negotiated solution
The fighting has doubled the number of people displaced by the violence from the previous estimate of 150,000 on April 17, the U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA said on Tuesday.
Speaking in Saudi Arabia on Monday, Vice President Bahah said Yemenis should seek a negotiated way out of the crisis based on a U.N. Security Council resolution passed in April.
The Houthis have already rejected the resolution, which imposes an arms embargo on them and on Saleh's supporters, calls on them to lay down their weapons and to leave Yemen's cities.
"The brothers in Ansarullah are called on to fear God ... and to stop their war on the cities," Bahah said, according to Yemeni news website www.voice-yemen.com. Ansarullah is the group's official name.
Bahah is popular among many of Yemen's feuding parties, and his appointment earlier this month created some hope that a negotiated solution could be reached.
In addition to bread and medical supplies running short, telecommunications could be cut within days due to fuel shortages, the state-run news agency Saba reported, quoting the director of the telecommunications authority.
