“Our preparations are in their final stages for the advance on the port,” a military source told AFP, requesting anonymity. The Iran-allied Houthi rebels have refused to cede control of Hodeida port, the entry point of three quarters of imports to impoverished Yemen.
The Houthis have controlled the port since 2014, when they drove the government out of the capital and seized much of northern Yemen and a string of Red Sea ports. On June 13, Yemen’s army and its allies launched their offensive to clear Hodeida of the rebels, raising UN concerns for vital aid shipments and food imports through the city’s docks.
Four pro-government fighters and 22 Houthis have been killed in the past 24 hours, medical sources said yesterday, bringing the death toll in the battle for Hodeida to 374. The pro-government forces announced the capture of the Hodeida airport on Wednesday morning.
The airport had been disused but it housed a major rebel base just inland from the coastal road into the city.
Rebel leader Abdulmalik al-Huthi on Wednesday night called for reinforcements to repel the advance of the UAE-backed government forces.
Local residents are now bracing for what they fear will be devastating street fighting, as tanks and buses carrying uniformed troops roll through the empty streets of the once-bustling city.
The Hodeida offensive, dubbed Operation Golden Victory, is the most intense battlefront in the already-brutal Yemen war which has left millions displaced. Since the 2015 intervention of Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen, joining the government’s fight against the Houthis, nearly 10,000 people have been killed with a majority of civilian victims.
