ADEN (The Thursday Times) — Yemen’s internationally recognised government has ordered its forces to build fortifications west and north of Aden, military officials said on Friday, after Houthi fighters advanced through a district on the edge of the city and took hilltops overlooking it.
The Houthis have captured large parts of al-Madaribah wal Ara, a district of Lahj province that borders Aden governorate, and are moving east of the Bab el-Mandeb strait towards the Gulf of Aden coast, an officer in the area said. Officials said the group had also seized al-Maqatirah, a mountainous area on a key road to Taiz, the city the Houthis have besieged for weeks.
“We received high-level directives to establish military fortifications west and north of Aden Governorate,” one official said. The work includes stacking sandbags and digging tunnels. Another official described it as a precautionary measure that should have been taken earlier. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity.
Fighting on the city’s doorstep
Local reports say clashes have spread in recent days across al-Mudharaba, Ras al-Ara, al-Muhawala, Kahbub, and al-Maqatirah, involving southern forces, the Nation’s Shield forces, and other units aligned with the government.
On Wednesday evening the Houthis fired two ballistic missiles at al-Buraiqa district in western Aden. A government source said they landed in a coalition military camp, and no casualties were reported. The government’s information minister condemned the attack and warned of the danger to civilians in the district.
Military spokesman Majed al-Nuzaili has said government-aligned forces carried out hundreds of strikes and inflicted heavy losses on the Houthis. The Houthis, for their part, said an artillery attack they blamed on Saudi forces killed two people and wounded four near Shada district in Saada province, on the northern border. Neither side’s territorial claims nor its casualty figures could be independently verified.
A war reopened
Government forces lost the Red Sea coastline along the Bab el-Mandeb in September and have failed in repeated attempts to retake it. A truce between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia collapsed in July, amid the US-Iran war, after the Houthis let an Iranian aircraft land in Sanaa despite Saudi control of Yemen’s airspace. Since then the group has declared a maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia and struck Saudi airports, ships, and oil installations, including, it says, the East-West pipeline and Yanbu this week.
Aden has been the government’s interim capital since the Houthis seized Sanaa in September 2014. It has been hit repeatedly in recent weeks: a missile and drone attack on the Maashiq presidential palace on October 15 killed five people and wounded 16, and the city’s airport and coastguard headquarters have also been targeted. The fighting has pushed the war’s toll towards 12,000, according to the World Health Organization.
On Thursday, the UN Security Council renewed sanctions on the Houthis, and Pakistan called their attacks on Saudi Arabia “terrorist attacks” that must end immediately. Saudi Arabia is also pressing the European Union to list the group as a terrorist organisation.
