Yemeni government forces backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have bombarded rebel positions outside Hodeida after pausing their push into the strategic Red Sea port city, government sources said Tuesday. With the Shiite Huthi rebels building up their defences inside Hodeida to repel any advance, more civilians fled the city itself, AFP reporters said.
According to military sources, both sides were bringing in reinforcements. Hospital sources and local residents said 11 civilians and 43 rebel fighters were killed on Sunday and Monday as the rebels came under fire south of Hodeida and in Huthi retaliatory action.
The rebels have held Hodeida since 2014 but government forces backed by the United Arab Emirates and other coalition troops launched a major assault last month and captured the disused airport on its southern outskirts - a major stepping stone for any push into the city.
On Saturday, the government and the UAE announced a pause in their advance. This week's deadly bombardment targeted rebel positions in Tohayta, Beit al-Faqiya and Zabid, to the south of Hodeida, government military sources said. Three civilians were killed in their car in a coalition air strike targeting rebel military vehicles on a road near Zabid, residents said.
Eight civilians, including four children, died in a rocket attack on Tohayta, witnesses said, with residents saying it was carried out by the rebels. Civilians from Hodeida were seen fleeing - loading suitcases, foam mattresses and sacks of basic provisions onto the back of pick-up trucks.
AFP journalists sighted families squeezed onto motorcycles, and other civilians fleeing in minibuses and other vehicles. Some pick-up trucks were so overloaded that the men clung onto the back rails and stood on bumpers while the women and children sat inside. Portraits of Saleh al-Sammad, a Huthi political chief killed in a coalition strike in April, gazed down from lampposts in litter-strewn streets outside the city.
Many civilians have already fled frontline areas. An elderly woman interviewed by AFP said she had abandoned her home just south of Hodeida for the relative safety of the city. "I refuse to go out. I'm still here crying when I sleep and crying when I wake up," she said. Another resident, Mohammed Ali, told AFP that many others had been unable to flee.
"There are a lot of people still stuck in some villages without any aid. The human rights organisations have to help them," he said. The head of the UN children's agency warned Tuesday that fears over the collapse of Yemen's healthcare and education systems had in essence materialised.
"The worry about collapse has now passed beyond that," said UNICEF chief Henrietta Fore, noting that many health workers and teachers had now gone unpaid for two years. Hodeida is the latest battlefront in Yemen's war that has killed nearly 10,000 people since 2015, including 2,200 children, pushing the impoverished country to the brink of famine.
Desperately needed relief supplies and three quarters of Yemen's commercial imports pass through the port in the city, which has a population of 600,000. UN envoy Martin Griffiths arrived in the rebel-held capital Sanaa on Sunday in a new bid to reach a deal to avert a devastating all-out battle for Hodeida.
Griffiths has said a proposal to grant the UN a major role in managing the port is under study. But the government and the UAE have demanded the rebels withdraw unconditionally from the whole city, not just the port, a condition the rebels have rejected. The UAE accuses the rebels of smuggling in weapons through the port.
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