Southern People’s Resistance militants loyal to Yemen’s President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi take positions on the frontline of fighting against Houthi fighters in the country’s southern province of Lahej yesterday.

Reuters/Aden

Forces loyal to Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi drove Houthi fighters from two towns they had seized hours earlier yesterday, residents said, apparently checking an advance by the Shia fighters towards his refuge in Aden.
But other Houthi units overnight entered the Red Sea port of al-Mukha, security officials and residents said, placing the Iranian-backed fighters a short drive from the Bab al-Mandeb strait, a sealane vital to oil shipments.
And in Taiz, soldiers and Houthi gunmen shot dead at least four people as demonstrators took to the streets to protest against the Houthi take-over of the central highland city, medical officials and witnesses said.
Fighting has spread across Yemen since last September when the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa and advanced into Sunni Muslim areas.
Hadi has been holed up in Aden since he fled Sanaa in February.
His forces have stationed tanks and artillery on a number of roads linking north and south Yemen. An array of tribesmen, militiamen and army units loyal to him are resisting the southward advance of the Houthis.
Skirmishes have escalated since the weekend and yesterday’s fighting showed the fluidity of the military contest.
The northern-based Houthis had seized Kirsh, a town about 100km north of Hadi’s base in the southern port of Aden. But army units, tribesmen and militiamen pounded the fighters with rockets and heavy artillery, forcing them to withdraw northwards, military officials and residents said.
Hadi’s forces also counter-attacked in Dhalea town, reversing the Houthis’ first inroads into the territory of the formerly independent south. The town has for years been the centre of an armed movement to secede from the Yemeni capital Sanaa.
A Houthi official expressed continued mistrust of Hadi, saying he had allied himself with Islamist militant forces. But but added the Houthi forces had no designs on Aden or any other region. Hadi has a strong record as an opponent of Al Qaeda.
“We are not targeting Aden, the South or any other region, just takfiri groups that are in some areas allied with various political forces,” Houthi official Mohamed al-Bukhaiti said by telephone, using a derogatory term for hardline Sunni Islamists who accuse Shias and others of being infidels.
“What is going on now we consider self-defence and the defence of our society.”
The rise of the Houthis has opened a new chapter of instability in Yemen, a perennially turbulent neighbour of Saudi Arabia and a frontline in US efforts to combat Islamist militants waging war across the region and beyond.
Their entry into al-Mukha took them to within 80km north of Bab al-Mandeb strait, which links the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean via the Suez Canal and Red Sea. More than 3.4mn barrels of oil per day passed through Bab el-Mandeb in tankers in 2013, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
Yemeni Foreign Minister Riyadh Yaseen appealed on Monday for Gulf Arab military intervention to halt the Houthi advances.
Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said the Gulf Arab states would take steps to back Hadi and he accused Iran of trying to sow sectarian strife in the region.
30 killed in clashes
At least 30 people have been killed in clashes between pro- and anti-government forces in central Yemen, tribal sources said yesterday.
The Shia Houthi militia, backed by troops allied to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, clashed with armed tribesmen in Baida province late Monday, the sources said, adding that nine tribesmen and 15 Houthi fighters were killed.
Meanwhile, clashes raged late Monday in Marib, east of Sanaa, where tribesmen loyal to Yemen’s internationally backed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi confronted advancing Houthi fighters and pro-Saleh troops, tribal sources said.