SANA’A (Dispatches) – The Yemeni army aided by poplar forces have recaptured key areas from Saudi-backed forces and mercenaries following intense battles in the country’s central province of Al-Bayda on Wednesday, a military official told Xinhua.
The local military official who asked to remain anonymous said that the Yemeni army forces “stepped up their military operations and gained progress on-ground leading to capturing As-Sawma’ah district in Al-Bayda province.”
He said the army forces were deployed in district and stationed there after the withdrawal of the militants.
The Yemeni forces carried out other simultaneous attacks and seized more key areas in the neighboring district of Mukayras, he added.
He clarified that ferocious battles are still going on between the army forces and the government forces backed by Saudi Arabia and its allies.
There was no official count of casualties, but local medical sources confirmed that several people were either killed or injured from both warring sides.
Saudi Arabia and its allies launched the devastating war on Yemen in 2015 in an attempt to reinstall Riyadh-friendly officials in Sana’a, and to crush the popular Ansarullah resistance movement.
The Saudi-led coalition has rejected the findings of a report by the UN Human Rights Council that strongly condemns the egregious violations committed by the foreign forces in Yemen.
Saudi Arabia’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, Abdul Aziz Al-Wasel, said the coalition “does not accept the report,” according to reports.
The UN envoy of the Saudi-backed regime in Yemen, Abdullah Ali Fadhel Al-Saadi, also reportedly dismissed the report, claiming it was “based on misleading information.”
A panel of UN-appointed rights experts last week said there was a growing “climate of fear” among civilians in Yemen, with no let-up in more than six years of Saudi-backed aggression.
The report censured the Saudi-led coalition for war crimes in Yemen, including airstrikes in support of the unpopular Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi regime, besides indiscriminate shelling of civilians.
“Since March 2015, over 23,000 airstrikes have been launched by the (Saudi-led) coalition in Yemen, killing or injuring over 18,000 civilians. Living in a country subjected to an average of 10 airstrikes per day has left millions feeling far from safe,” reads the report.