Al-Muqalla: The Arab coalition backing the Yemeni government launched fresh airstrikes on Sunday targeting a military camp in Houthi-held Sanaa and rebel reinforcements in Marib province.
The coalition said in a statement on Sunday that it destroyed an arms depot at a military camp controlled by the Houthis, urging residents not to pass or congregate near targeted military sites in Sanaa.
Sanaa residents reported major explosions as images on social media showed smoke billowing out of targeted sites.
Soon after a militia-fired missile killed two civilians in Jazan, Saudi Arabia, the coalition launched a massive military operation against the Houthis in Yemen.
The coalition vowed to punish the Houthis for targeting civilians in Yemen and across the border in the state.
At the same time, local media reported on Sunday that the latest airstrikes by the coalition have prompted the Houthis to change officials and arrest members suspected of being spies of the coalition.
Citing a source close to the Supreme Council of the Houthi movement, al-Sahil al-Gharbi, a news site affiliated with Yemen’s former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, reported that militias were fighting coalition airstrikes on their command rooms, secret military sites. was shocked. and officers.
The news site said the movement accused the Guard of sending key coordinates to the coalition and subsequently changing security and intelligence protocols, including accommodation, guards, communications and meeting times.
On the ground, coalition jets attacked Houthi military gatherings and vehicles in Marib province, where government forces are battling aggressive rebel strikes, Yemeni military spokesman Abdu Abdullah Majili told Arab News on Sunday.
Majili said the air strikes thwarted Houthi efforts to consolidate their dwindling force in Marib and paved the way for government forces to retake the area.
Dozens of fighters were killed in heavy fighting between government troops and the Houthis south of Marib over the past 24 hours, as the Houthis continued to attack government loyalists.
Majili said the latest fierce fighting took place around the al-Balak al-Sharqi mountain range on the city’s southern edge.
Thousands of fighters and civilians have been killed since February, when the Houthis renewed a major military offensive to capture the energy-rich city of Marib, the government’s last stronghold in the north.
Also in Marib, government officials and local human rights activists strongly condemned the Houthi missile attack on a petrol station in Marib, which claimed the lives of three civilians.
A missile fired by the Houthis exploded inside a complex of buildings, an oil station and an automobile repair shop in the city of Marib on Saturday, killing three civilians, including a child, and wounding eight others.
Two more missiles fired by the militia also struck other places in the densely populated city in the past two days.
Yemen’s Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism Muammar al-Aryani tweeted that the Houthis intensified missile attacks on residential areas in Marib after the Houthis failed to gain military advantage on fronts outside the city.
“Targeting residential areas in Marib using three Iranian-made ballistic missiles is a frenzied and cowardly act. This shows how many fronts the Houthis have caused damage and its indifference to the fate of millions of residents of the city,” he said.
Separately, Yemen’s President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi on Saturday appointed Awadh Mohammed al-Wazar al-Awlaki, an influential tribal leader, an MP and member of the General People’s Congress party, as the new governor of the oil-rich province of Shabwa. Mohamed Saleh bin Adeo, who was named as an advisor to the president.
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