CAIRO – At least 20 Houthi militias were killed in heavy clashes in Yemen’s third-largest city Ta’izz on Thursday, a day after they pounded it with rockets, forces loyal to the government said Reuters reported Oct 22.
Ta’izz, considered Yemen’s cultural capital, has suffered huge destruction since becoming a main battleground in a war between government supporters and the Iran-allied Houthis, who are backed by forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. It is currently divided between the two sides.
A Saudi-led coalition trying to restore the government of Yemen’s current president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, has gained ground in the south.
Forces loyal to Hadi killed at least 20 Houthis and Saleh loyalists in Ta’izz, their commanders said. Nobody from the Houthis was available to confirm the death toll.
Indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas in Ta’izz on Wednesday killed 22 people and wounded 140 others, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in a statement, citing local hospitals as their sources.
“The situation in Ta’izz is particularly dire, even by the standards of the appalling conditions all over Yemen, with the nearly half of the hospitals closed and streams of wounded people desperate for treatment,” the head of the ICRC delegation in Yemen, Antoine Grand, was quoted as saying.
Thousands have fled and those left behind face severe shortages in water, food and electricity. Grand said the ICRC had been trying for five weeks to obtain authorization to deliver urgent medicines to one hospital in Ta’izz.