The toll from days of fighting between government forces and Iran-backed Houthi rebels in southwest Yemen climbed past 300 on Sunday, as hundreds of families fled their homes to escape the violence.
Two military officials with the Saudi-backed government forces told AFP that 84 of their troops were killed between midday Saturday and early Sunday morning, mostly in missile attacks. Four Houthi military sources said 57 rebel fighters were killed in the same period. According to an AFP tally compiled using various military and medical sources from both sides of the conflict, more than 300 combatants and some civilians have been killed since the start of the Houthi assault.
“The shooting came at us from above and from below,” said Rawdhah Hasan, a woman displaced from Maqbanah. A military official within the government told AFP that the rebels had succeeded on Saturday evening in “cutting off the road linking Taiz to Mokha”. One military official with the internationally recognised government based in Aden said fighting had subsided in the early hours of Sunday morning. The official said government “forces were able to establish positions for themselves north of Hays after advancing in the area”, referring to a frontline district less than 30 kilometres inland from the Red Sea coast.
The Houthis launched an offensive on Thursday aiming to cut off the government-held port city of Mokha, under fire for weeks, and advance towards areas bordering the Bab al-Mandab strait at the southern entrance to the Red Sea.
