SANA’A (Dispatches) – The Yemeni army along with the popular forces have achieved on-ground military progress and captured key areas in southern Yemen’s oil-rich province of Shabwa on Tuesday, a military official told Xinhua.
The local military source said on condition of anonymity that the Yemeni army carried out an all-out offensive against Saudi-backed militants and mercenaries and captured Bayhan district in the province, where key oil fields are located.
Yemeni army forces were deployed in Bayhan following several hours of fighting with the former Saudi-backed government forces in the area, he said.
After the army forces deployment in Bayhan, they began attacking areas in the district of Usaylan which also has oil fields, he added.
Meanwhile, thousands of people took to the streets in Yemen’s northwestern Saada province on Tuesday to mark the seventh anniversary of the September 21 revolution against a Saudi-backed regime in Sana’a.
Local media reports said participants in the rally chanted slogans against foreign aggression while carrying the country’s tricolor flag and pictures of top resistance leaders.
They also denounced the complicity of Western powers and the Zionist regime in the Saudi-backed aggression in war-ravaged Yemen.
Hailing what they called the “revolution of the free,” the demonstrators vowed to uphold their revolutionary ideals and not surrender to the foreign powers. They said the popular revolution had thwarted the conspiracy to divide Yemen through resistance to foreign aggression and hegemony.
In 2014, the people of Yemen led a popular uprising against the Saudi-backed unpopular regime of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. As protests gripped the country, the Ansarullah resistance movement on Sept. 21 took control of the capital Sana’a following a rapid advance south from their northern stronghold of Saada.
The massively popular protests were against the incompetent and corrupt regime in Sana’a backed by Riyadh. In a bid to crush the resistance and reinstall the Hadi regime, a Saudi-led coalition launched a ferocious bombing campaign on the neighboring Arab country barely six months later.