SANA’A (Dispatches) – Heavy fighting between the Yemeni army and Saudi-backed militants and mercenaries raged in the central province of al-Bayda on Thursday as the army forces repelled another strategic mountain by the mercenaries and pushed them back, a military source said.
The fighting took place in two mountainous areas of Hisn al-Nasir and Akabat al-Kontho in the northeastern district of Nati. Both mountainous areas overlook the adjacent strategic district of Bayhan in the neighboring eastern province of Shabwa.
Saudi Arabia, backed by the U.S. and regional allies, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing the popular Ansarullah resistance movement.
Yemeni armed forces and allied Popular Committees have, however, gone from strength to strength against the Saudi-led invaders, and left Riyadh and its allies bogged down in the country.
The war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead, and displaced millions more. It has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases.
A high-ranking Yemeni official has denounced Saudi Arabia and its regional allies over their blackmail-style tactics against his country, stressing the need for unconditional removal of the tight sea, land and air blockade on Yemen as the prerequisite for peace to prosper in the crisis-stricken country.
“The United States and its allies, who have besieged Yemeni people, have no right to accuse those opposing the occupation of Yemen of inflicting suffering upon the nation,” Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, Chairman of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, wrote in a series of posts published on his Twitter page on Thursday.
“It would not be a sensible thing to besiege oneself, and unreasonably oppose the entry of basic commodities while no viable alternative is at hand. Yemen has been depending 99% on [commercial food] imports since the 1970s, causing its own suffering.”