{"id":15129,"date":"2018-09-15T02:23:22","date_gmt":"2018-09-15T02:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=15129"},"modified":"2018-09-15T02:23:22","modified_gmt":"2018-09-15T02:23:22","slug":"houthis-15-killed-in-coalition-air-raids-on-yemens-hodeidah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=15129","title":{"rendered":"Houthis: 15 killed in coalition air raids on Yemen’s Hodeidah"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Yemen’s Houthi rebels say at least 15 people have been killed in air raids by a Saudi-UAE coalition targeting a strategic highway linking the port city of Hodeida with the capital, Sanaa.<\/p>\n

Fighting near Hodeidah – the main gateway for imports of relief supplies and commercial goods into the war-ravaged country – has escalated since June after the Saudi-UAE military alliance battling the Houthis launched a wide-ranging operation to retake the strategic seaport.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Houthi-affiliated Al-Masirah news outlet said on Friday the attack on Thursday struck the Kilo 16 highway, the main supply route heading east out of Hodeidah.<\/p>\n

More than 20 people were reported wounded.<\/p>\n

Al Jazeera could not independently verify the figures.<\/p>\n

The reported assault came just days after the Yemeni army, backed by coalition air support, made inroads<\/a>\u00a0into the Kilo 16 area.<\/p>\n

Amanda Brydon, humanitarian policy adviser at Save the Children, said the highway 16 is critical for humanitarian aid.<\/p>\n

“What we are seeing with the fighting is the critical junction at Kilo 16 is the artery towards Sanaa and other parts of the country.”<\/span><\/p>\n

“The port [of Hodeidah] is a lifeline for the rest of the country. Over 80 percent of the country’s commercial imports come through this port,” she told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

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WATCH: Yemen’s Geneva talks fall apart after Houthi no-show<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

The offensive is being carried out by a disparate collective of forces, including the National Resistance, a group of fighters loyal to Yemen’s former President\u00a0Ali Abdullah Saleh<\/span><\/a>, the Tihama Resistance, a group of fighters loyal to Yemen’s President\u00a0Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi<\/span><\/a>, and the Giant Brigades, a military unit backed by the\u00a0United Arab Emirates<\/a>\u00a0(UAE)<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi see Hodeidah port as the main entry point of weapons for the Houthis and\u00a0have accused their regional rival Iran of sending missiles to the rebels, a charge Tehran\u00a0has denied<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

‘Struggling to survive’\u00a0<\/h2>\n

On Thursday, the United Nations\u00a0said<\/a> ongoing violence could trigger\u00a0famine<\/span><\/a>\u00a0in the impoverished nation where an estimated 8.4 million people are facing starvation.<\/span><\/p>\n

“The situation has dramatically deteriorated in the past few days … people are struggling to survive”, Lise Grande,<\/span>\u00a0the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, said in a statement<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

“We’re particularly worried about the Red Sea mill, which currently has 45,000 metric tonnes of food inside, enough to feed 3.5 million people for a month. If the mills are damaged or disrupted, the human cost will be incalculable,” Grande added<\/p>\n

The war in Yemen, the region’s poorest country, has unleashed the\u00a0<\/span>world’s most urgent humanitarian crisis<\/a>. It started in 2014 when the Houthis overran much of the country, including Sanaa.<\/span><\/p>\n

The conflict escalated in 2015 with the intervention of the Saudi-led coalition which launched a\u00a0massive air campaign aimed at rolling back Houthi gains and supporting the pro-government forces loyal to<\/span>\u00a0President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the UN, at least 10,000 people have been killed since the coalition intervened in\u00a0Yemen<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>The death toll has not been updated in years and is likely to be far higher.<\/p>\n

Muscat talks\u00a0<\/h2>\n

In a separate development, talks on Thursday held in Oman’s capital, Muscat ,between the UN’s envoy to Yemen\u00a0<\/span>Martin Griffiths and delegation of Houthis ended wiwthout a breakthrough, according to the rebels.<\/p>\n

“There has not been progress regarding the discussions while we have not received the guarantees,” Hamid Assem, a member of the Houthi delegation, told AFP news agency.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the talks, Mohammed Abdulsalam, who headed the Houthi delegation alongside fellow rebel official Abdelmalak al-Ajri, discussed the reasons for their absence from peace talks planned to be held in Geneva last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those talks,\u00a0which would have been the first in nearly two years,<\/span>\u00a0were scheduled to start on September 6 but the Yemeni government’s delegation left after the Houthis failed<\/a> to show up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The rebels accused the UN of failing to provide guarantees<\/a> for the safe return of their delegation from Switzerland to Sanaa and to secure the evacuation of wounded rebels to Oman.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thursday’s talks in Muscat also covered “necessary measures” needed for fresh talks set for “as soon as possible”, the rebel-affiliated Saba news agency said.<\/p>\n

Griffiths is also scheduled to visit Sanaa and Saudi Arabia.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yemen’s Houthi rebels say at least 15 people have been killed in air raids by a Saudi-UAE coalition targeting a strategic highway linking the port city of Hodeida with the capital, Sanaa. Fighting near Hodeidah – the main gateway for imports of relief supplies and commercial goods into the war-ravaged country – has escalated since…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":15130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}